Redraw hurts Fury building.
That said, there isn't anything like the feeling of ripping into someone with a hatchet! Willpower would be one of the better choices to avoid redraw as well.
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well if thats true why do so many people use warmace?
Well, War Mace has Smashing damage which goes well with Broots that love to SMASH...
Plus it just sounds and feels powerful right out the gate.
Axe is mostly Lethal damage and doesn't bloom as early.
Though in all honesty I rarely notice a problem with Redraw being an issue, it's just that's the most obvious reason there are so few.
I actually prefer my Axe/Dark Brute The Faceless Executioner over my
WM/Invul Deranged Clownster.
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Well, Axe's damage is weaker than Mace's. Axe has more mitigation through KD's though.
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/this, plus redraw is just a PITA too, i used to have a axe/fire brute at one point but i deleted him due to the constant redraw
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Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
Redraw hurts Fury building.
That said, there isn't anything like the feeling of ripping into someone with a hatchet! Willpower would be one of the better choices to avoid redraw as well. |
According to the numbers guys and the programmers, redraw has no impact on DPS. The only thing it hurts is the visual (e.g. if you hate the animation). So if redraw is your only problem, it isn't a problem.
However, mitigation by KU or KD can hinder Fury generation (mobs on the ground aren't attacking you). Every BA attack has a KU or KD component, so this could hurt DPS. Prior to the Fury changes, this would've been particularly bad. After the changes, I'm not quite sure. I'd imagine the 65% level is pretty easy to achieve now, but anything beyond that might be a bit difficult.
Redraw isn't any issue with the exception of visual annoyance. I've seen plenty of axe brutes over time, maybe not as much as I've seen SS, fire, or elec....but they are out there. Like someone else mentioned, it could just be the whole SMASH mindset, and how a giant sharp blade doesn't yield the same feel that some of the other sets offer.
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It could be that pretty much everything axe can do mace can do too, without the lethal damage vs robots 'problem'. Also if you've played broadsword the animations are very similar (perhaps shared) so if you don't like the feel of repeating powersets it could grate at you in the back of your mind.
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Wait, war mace is more powerful than Axe? I'm one-shotting even con minions just with the T2 attack in axe on my new brute.
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War Mace does more damage, mainly due to Clobber.
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Originally Posted by Dr_Occult
Wait, war mace is more powerful than Axe? I'm one-shotting even con minions just with the T2 attack in axe on my new brute.
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I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. |
Originally Posted by streetlight
According to the numbers guys and the programmers, redraw has no impact on DPS. The only thing it hurts is the visual (e.g. if you hate the animation). So if redraw is your only problem, it isn't a problem.
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Back Alley Brawler initially said what you've just said above.
However he then came back and took back what he said and said redraw times are not factored into animation times for Weapon sets.
They are factored into things like Stone Melee hammer attacks and Spines/Thorn attacks however.
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yeah after playing an axe/fire brute i can tell you that with axe, the redraw definitly hurts dps and makes battles feel so much slower
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Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
I'm pretty sure this is incorrect.
Back Alley Brawler initially said what you've just said above. However he then came back and took back what he said and said redraw times are not factored into animation times for Weapon sets. They are factored into things like Stone Melee hammer attacks and Spines/Thorn attacks however. |
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Thanks to everyone who pointed out the current state of the redraw mechanic. I did have it wrong above.|
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Back Alley Brawler initially said what you've just said above. However he then came back and took back what he said and said redraw times are not factored into animation times for Weapon sets. They are factored into things like Stone Melee hammer attacks and Spines/Thorn attacks however.
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I went back through a bunch of threads to figure out the history of the issue and it does appear that redraw will eat into DPS at this time. Solutions were apparently worked on, but were abandoned as either inconsistent or requiring more hours than it'd be worth. The amount of time lost to redraw will vary based on the particular set, but prior to GR the longest redraw was 0.66 seconds. I'm not sure if Arcanatime applies to redraw on its own or if the redraw is just tacked onto the activation of the power.
The amount of DPS lost to redraw depends on how far out you project the fight. If you look at a single 0.83s attack and tack on 0.66s in redraw, then you've lost a lot of DPS. If you drag that out over several attack chains in a 2 minute timespan, then you've lost only a nominal amount. The more clicky a Brute's secondary and the more they use Pool powers, the more time will be lost.
In the end, the amount lost will be very little, even if fighting just a single standard spawn, but it'll still be time and damage lost.
Axe, while not outright terrible, unfortunately occupies a space where (other than being able to use an Axe graphically) it does nothing better than any other set.
Mitigation? WM, SM, SS all provide, to name a few.
DPS? It is unlikely in the extreme that you will ever be topping the DPS charts using Axe.
Hard hitting attacks? Other sets have ST attacks that hit as hard, or harder.
AoE? Again, other sets have AoEs that have a wider arc/radius, have better DPS, DPA or hit more targets.
On top of all this BA suffers from redraw as well as facing lethal damage resistance.
Should any of this stop you from playing it if you have a cool concept? Absolutely not.
Well, if brute had BS, I'd be playing it. I remember a chart somewhere showing all the brute primaries outdamaging the scrapper ones. Guess I should look at damage numbers in Mids and compare WM and BA.
Yeah i dont plan on making a axe brute... I played around with the animations and they were not appealing to me. Im 99% sure i would use a rusty hack saw to cut off my arm to get a spines brute. But i think that will never happen.
^^ Yeah, I did the same thing when thinking about making an axe brute. Pound for pound it doesn't matter the damage numbers if you can't live with the animation or find it annoying it will be a long haul to 50 and beyond.
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The latter. Arcanatime is an approximation for the server clock alignment issue whereby the act of telling the server to execute an attack cannot be obeyed until a set of conditions is met, and those conditions are only checked at the start of a combat clock. There is always a gap between when an attack could theoretically be executed, and when the game servers would actually execute that attack, even if there was zero network lag.|
Originally Posted by streetlight
I'm not sure if Arcanatime applies to redraw on its own or if the redraw is just tacked onto the activation of the power.
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Weapon redraw causes an extra drawing animation to play, which in effect lengthens the amount of time it takes to execute an attack before the next one can execute. But it does not add any more checking into the process, so no additional arcanatime-induced delay.
The most confusing thing about discussions surrounding weapon redraw is the fact that different people interpret the words "factor into" and "redraw penalty." Here's the entire scoop so everyone knows what is going on here, and what changed.
Weapon based attack sets have a special requirement on them that non-weapon sets do not, for visual purposes. In order for a weapon attack to execute, the player must be in the "weapon state" and have the weapons drawn. If the player is not in this state, the game will automatically put the player into this state. The act of doing so plays an animation which "draws" the weapons. This is what players call "weapon draw."
The best case scenario for using a weapon attack is you're already in this state, and you simply execute the attack. The worst case scenario is that you're not in this state, and have to execute weapon draw + attack, which takes longer. In the old days, the attack's *cast time* was calculated to be this worst case time. So if an attack takes 1.0 seconds and weapon redraw takes 0.6 seconds, the attack had a cast time of 1.6 seconds.
If you were not in weapon mode, the game would play redraw, then the attack, which would take 1.6 seconds. The attack animation and the cast time would expire a the same time, and you could use another attack after that. If you were already in weapon mode, the game would play the attack, and that's it. 1.0 seconds later the attack animation would be over but cast time would still be running. You could not execute another attack until cast time expired, because *both *cast time must be over *and* the attack must be finished playing. So you'd stand around for 0.6 seconds until cast time expired, *then* be able to play another attack.
So a weapon set would look like this: Draw -> Attack -> Wait -> Attack -> Wait -> Attack -> Wait. The pauses were as long a redraw, so whether you needed to redraw or not, the attack chain would take the same amount of time. But it was a little jerky. Some people described this situation thusly: there is no weapon redraw penalty. Obviously, whether you have to redraw or not, the chain takes the same amount of time.
BaB and Castle decided to reverse this. Instead, cast time was set to the actual running length of the attack, period. So now, what happens is this. If you are already in weapon mode, you just Attack -> Attack -> Attack with no need to wait around for cast time to expire. But if you are *not* in weapon mode, then what happens is this: you draw your weapon, which takes 0.6 seconds (in this example). Then you execute the attack, which takes 1.0 more seconds. 0.4 seconds after you start the attack, the cast time of the attack expires (1.0 seconds) and the combat engine says you can use another attack. However, the attack is still playing and because its rooted, you cannot do anything until its completed. So you really cannot attack anyway: cast time expires early, but the attack itself runs its full course. It costs you the time to draw the weapons when you are not in weapon mode, but there's no cost if you are already in weapon mode.
Weapon draw used to be factored into cast time and now cast time no longer includes redraw time. Because of this, there is now a weapon redraw penalty whereas in the past there was no penalty. But its more precise to say players always paid the penalty and now they only pay it when they have to. In other words, there has always been a weapon redraw penalty, but now you don't have to pay it all the time for no reason.
One interesting side effect is that weapon sets have always actually been pretty fast, because they were designed with redraw in mind. When redraw was eliminated from cast time, all weapon sets suddenly became much, much faster - and thus better. On top of that, BaB improved many of them by shaving frames and eliminating further pauses in the animations, making some of them - I'm specifically thinking about Katana here - amazingly better from what they were.
Incidentally, weapon redraw should have only a minimal impact on Fury, given the current mechanics of Fury. Fury is now much easier to build, and much harder to max out, so small redraw glitches in an attack chain should not dramatically change the equilibrium point for Fury. Changes in incoming attacks mean more.
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Out of curiosity, how long do the various redraws take?
Also, how do they add into Arcanatime? With the 1.0s attack and .6s redraw example, does this take a total of 1.848 seconds (as it would for a 1.6s cast time attack), or some other higher number? And does that 1.0s attack start recharging after 1 second has passed, .4 seconds before the animation expires?
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Honestly I wish we didn't have to pay it at all.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But its more precise to say players always paid the penalty and now they only pay it when they have to. In other words, there has always been a weapon redraw penalty, but now you don't have to pay it all the time for no reason.
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I suppose it wouldn't work to just have a "weapon toggle" so you were always effectively in the weapon state.
I just find the weapon redraw basically ruins all weapon sets for me, it's easily the most unappealing aspect of any primary.
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Usually 0.6 to 1.0 seconds. Dual Pistols, for example, has I believe 0.83 seconds of weapon draw. The Brute/Tanker ones are usually 1.0 seconds.|
Originally Posted by MagicFlyingHippy
Out of curiosity, how long do the various redraws take?
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| Also, how do they add into Arcanatime? With the 1.0s attack and .6s redraw example, does this take a total of 1.848 seconds (as it would for a 1.6s cast time attack), or some other higher number? |
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| And does that 1.0s attack start recharging after 1 second has passed, .4 seconds before the animation expires? |
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In a very real sense you don't. At least not on melee sets. BaB sped them all up so that they make up for redraw by being faster than they were before even without redraw. Unless you are literally redrawing every attack, I believe most if not all the melee weapon sets are faster now than they would have been if redraw was somehow magically eliminated at release.|
Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
Honestly I wish we didn't have to pay it at all.
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| I suppose it wouldn't work to just have a "weapon toggle" so you were always effectively in the weapon state. |
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| I just find the weapon redraw basically ruins all weapon sets for me, it's easily the most unappealing aspect of any primary. |
Having visual redraw without increasing the attack times is theoretically possible, but would take an awful lot of time to implement, and its unclear if that could be done in a visually non-odd way.
My perspective on redraw is probably a little different than most people's. I saw first hand what an enormous *benefit* redraw was. BaB looked at MA, which was and probably still is the most underperforming scrapper primary, and shaved a few frames here and there to improve its performance. With those changes MA would have ended up near the top of the pack on single target damage. Then he took a literal chainsaw to Katana, and suddenly Katana was out performing MA on single target *and* AoE. All because weapon redraw gave the devs higher discretion to accelerate that set to a far higher degree.
I believe every melee weapon set that has weapon redraw would be worse than it is now if it did not have redraw at all from the beginning. I can understand not liking redraw to an extent, but to complain about its performance issues is a bit unseemly if you know the history.
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BA vs WM
WM Crowd Control has a higher max number of affected foes, faster recharge and less END (after it got buffed) compared to the BA version Pendulum.
The T5 ST attacks has WM (Clobber) at higher damage but higher recharge and END cost than BA (Swoop).
BA is pure KD/KU so can stack easier (in my mind).
WM is part KD/KU and part Stun so is harder to stack mitigation if needed.
WM has a better SMASH sound (each to their own here).
BA/WM vs the World
As for BA/WM vs other sets I like both as they have a fairly even balance of ST vs AoE attacks.
Both have 4 ST and 3 AoE (OK in all honesty the T8 narrow cone attacks are more like long ST to maybe hit 2 foes).
They are slower and fairly END heavy but hitting someone with a massive Axe/Hammer is just so AWESOME compared to some of the other sets (again personal opinion).
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I would SO make a BS/SD Brute if I could...|
Originally Posted by Dr_Occult
Well, if brute had BS, I'd be playing it. I remember a chart somewhere showing all the brute primaries outdamaging the scrapper ones. Guess I should look at damage numbers in Mids and compare WM and BA.
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As for redraw, maybe make the weapon work with the animation of an attack if another weapons doesn't need to be drawn. (Like a Revolver temp power from a BA)
This would mean slinging lightning or fire from the power pools from your sword/axe/mace ect, using Burn or Active Defense without dropping your weapon, and so forth. Just alternate animations that work solely with weapons. I understand it could be time consuming, but it would a) solve the issue once and for all and b) look bad ***.
Maybe something to look into for Issue 22 or 23.
So im playing my Fire/WP brute. He doesn't any KD or stun powers so sometimes huge damage spikes rip me in half. At lvl 26 im playing +1 mobs = to 4 heros. And so happen to get a mission against warriors. The Battle ax bosses seem to rip me a new ******* some times when they land there extreme damage powers which made me wonder, How do battle axe brutes hold up in the game, it might be my next project after i finish my FM/WP. Anyone have experience with a BA/WP Because it looks like it would be really fun.