It's time to improve Broadsword

No believe it or not. Some enemies are weak to smashing or lethal while being strong against the other. The most prevalent example being the Devouring Earth.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Devouring_Earth

I can say the same about you Dave, did you win a pvp league of one person? Go troll the pvp forums nublet, or get with the discussion.

Well, it's not like they have Broadsword currently...

"Otherwise it probably won't be implemented," soon, I think you mean.

And there really is no guarantee that any fix we suggest is going to get implemented at all, let alone soon, so asking for fixes to everything that BS needs fixed isn't unreasonable. Heck, it's not like the devs can't figure out how to just drop any potential new animations from the slate or save them for later if they decide they do want the mechanical fixes sooner.

Do you ever read your own posts Geko? You just said..

'Comparing the DPA of an AoE focused set to BS is irrelevant. It's comparing apples and oranges.'

yet look up about 5 lines...

'All the things Spines has that BS doesn't:', and go onto list exactly how, in every way possible, Spines doesnt compare to BS. Oh wait, you forgot to add it also doesnt compare because the power names are different. There, now it is all covered.

Look back to your first post. You say there...

'While the structure of Katana and Broadsword are identical, Katana gets better DPA on 5 of 7 attacks and is only worse on one attack. This situation is no longer reasonable.'

The is your CORE argument Geko. The one you are basing this whole idea on! (Note, I am not saying you are not correct in the lower DPA's) So then, when I join the discussion, and go and list sets with WORSE dpa than broadsword, suddenly that is silly and you quickly pile in with listing all the unqiue things that Spines can do, and tell me I should not compare an aoe set to a single target set.

If you would note, I did not do that. I compared the DPA of the sets attacks, regardless of what kind they were. Because..again, your first post talks about DPA. So it seems that you are totally validated in comparing one of the best aoe sets, to a single target one, in order to make YOUR point, but I cant compare the very stat that you base your argument on. Logic!

But hey, you want to list all the shiny bits of spines, compared to BS? (despite the comparison being, as you point out, useless)
BS: All attacks doing -7.5% def, enhanceable
130 degree melee cone (ripper being 90deg)
A + melee/lethal def attack, stackable
A mag 0.67 KD atatck, with an arc and ability to hit more targets
A mag 4 KU attack
A High damage attack, able to be picked FIRST
Ability to slot one more set type of damage proc in attacks.

So there ya go Geko..a list of things BS has THAT spines can't do. And you know what, it is JUST as worthless as your list of things spines has that BS doesnt..since they arent the same sets. But hey..I only compared the DPAs...now..what was the thread started based on the DPA on broadsword...oh yeah! This one.

There's no contradiction here. The thing you correctly cite as his core argument leads with "While the structure of Katana and Broadsword are identical...". There is NO meaningful mechanical difference except the DPA. That's why comparing just their DPA is meaningful, because they are otherwise extremely similar. It's comparing apples to apples.

Ah, thank you very much. I'd not taken power analyzers to lots of things, obviously. If most or even a big minority of NPCs have big gaps in their smashing v lethal, then these suggestions make a lot of sense.

Thanks for taking the time to point that out.

And thanks to EvilG, too, who answered moments after Hopeling, and gave another helpful link.

Nor I usually (except a brief period on my Bane after I got Surveillance and thought it was really cool), but a bizarrely large fraction of my most-played characters deal primarily lethal damage, and the next-most-often-played character deals smashing damage, so the difference is quite noticeable to me.

That's a fair point. If we are going to follow that line of thinking, then another possible option is to give Broadsword attacks faster animations that look a little smoother. That solves both the feel and the mechanical issues. I'm not good with DPA calculations, but with the proper animation times Broadsword could be a version of Katana that deals more damage and costs more endurance. IIRC, that's the way the two sets were back before Katana got its new animations. I'd be fine with seeing a change like that.

Child, you are comparing apples to oranges, but here, let me compare apples to apples to oranges.

And I didn't even get into the secondary effects of the sets.

So, troll, go back under your bridge. ^_^

Psst...
Devs don't balance around IO's... This point is invalid too.

You just reiterated my point. You were the one that compared Spines to Broadsword. As I stated, that's plainly a worthless comparison because as an AoE focused set, its differences in DPA are explainable by other advantages.

This is why I'm using Katana as a comparator.

If balance in a game like this means anything it means that when someone chooses a power, a class, an archetype, etc. that they will not in all cases be either superior or inferior to other like choices.

Of course, Spines has lower DPA than Broadsword. Spines is also attacking in AoE every other second. The list you made of Broadsword's advantages over Spines is correct. No argument. But let's compare Katana and Broadsword:

Broadsword has:

Larger per attack damage

Katana has:

Better recharge;
Faster animations; these two lead to

Better DPS;
Better Burst damage; and
Better abilities to leverage procs.

Broadsword and Katana are not in balance. If Katana is a balanced set, and I would opine that it is, the Broadsword MUST be underpowered. Now, as I said in the OP, it's not by a lot and there really doesn't need to be a major buff here. But Broadsword is at a material disadvantage to Katana. This is a fact. That's not fair to those who select Broadsword and those who selected Broadsword long ago.

I'm not sure how long you've played, but when the game first launched, there was NO mechanical difference between Katana and Broadsword. IIRC they even had the exact same names for their powers. This was changes so that there was more than an aesthetic difference between the sets. But when they did that, they introduced a mechanical advantage to Katana. When they added proc damage via Inventions, they made it worse. This is not a statement of my opinion. This can and has been shown.

Your argument seems to be Broadsword is fun, so it needs no buff. That's a legitimate argument to make, but does not answer the charge I made.

But again, I thank you for your arguments. Debate keeps issues alive.

If you think the devs are not considering IOs when they design new sets, then you really are not paying attention.

I think you're just repeating something that keeps getting repeated because people repeat it.

It's actually pretty funny, but at release, the only difference between Katana and Broadsword was that Katana attacks recharged faster and did less damage. It was essentially in the same spot Broadsword is now.

In fact, IIRC, I had the mindset that Katana was a crappy version of Broadsword when I made my main all those years ago. Funny how things change.

I'd actually expect them NOT to balance around IOs, since the original sets where not balanced around IOs and free players don't have access to the IO system.

These are differences in amounts that only min maxers really care about.

Otherwise Shield Defense is completely out of wack balance wise in favor of Scrappers vs. Brutes. The devs don't care, because in their eyes the difference is minor, even though that means Shield Charge for Scrappers does something like 40% to 50% more damage and that the ST DPS boost Scrapper's get is well beyond any mitigation benefit the Brute gets in return.

I'm sure you'll make a thread about that soon though.

I'm sure that won't stop your pet agenda, but that's my take on how the devs see things.





Really?


Sorry, but those two quotes really don't match up even remotely.

Consider and balance are two entire different things for a developer. Look at time manipulation. It's a pretty good set just on SOs, this is where it's balanced around. Yet, the dev that worked on the set said something to the effect that it was a great set for a min-maxer to work with - iow, the IO sets that were able to go with it were considered.

In order for devs to balance around IOs, they can't take a set as if it were in a vaccuum. They'd have to take into consideration every possible set bonus combination possible within that primary, and every single set bonus combination for each secondaries. Then compare all of those results with the results of all the other primaries and their bonuses, and all the secondaries. Then lets not consider adding Incarnate abilities.

The majority of the game is designed to work with SOs, outside of a particular set of Incarnate abilties being useful to smooth over success for a couple of trials (which isn't an absolute either) and the level shifts, a 50 can even go through the trials on nothing but SOs.

Tha's what people mean when they talk about new sets not being balanced around IOs, because they're not, at least in the sense of how they perform for normal play.

I agree with all of that.

That's not the kind of point that I was refuting however. Errant's point is that the procs are not even a consideration, which I don't believe is true.


Maybe Errant meant something different, but that's what you get with a statement like that (one that is repeated like a mantra).

I agree. That's not fair. Well, the effects of the damage boost are, but Shield Charge not fully benefiting from Fury does not.

I have more level 50 Brutes than Scrappers BTW. I'm not biased in favor of either AT.



Why don't they?

I think Stalkers and Scrappers are pretty close in damage potential, so much so that I don't perceive a difference on average. I also don't see a major survivability differential either around the average. I think it completely sucks that certain sets like Regen, Will, Ice and other sets with Dull Pain clones don't get the full benefit of those powers and I would change that. But on the whole, I have not found Stalkers to be significantly weaker defensively than Scrappers.

It was a shorter and pithy version of a longer statement.

Developers do not balance the BASIC build of a powerset around IO's. They can't, for doing so would invalidate the players that choose not to ever muck with the Invention system, and with the launch of Freedom, every single Free/<Tier 7 Premium player.

Do they consider IO's and their interactions with powers and powersets? Yes, but they are not the metric a set's performance is determined by, but more the outlier maximum at which a set can perform. They have (and I no doubt expect this to continue) made adjustments in the past to powers based off of IO usage (Dark Melee Buzzsaws, Ice Control Proctic Air and other toggles, Traps), but the primary intent is to ensure the set is playable with SO's. (e.g. Fiery Aura and Shields - Both are "as intended" squishier than other Defensive Powersets, and acknowledged to be monsters when IO'd out. They've not been reduced though, since that "could" invalidate their play with the Enhancements available to everyone.)

So, essentially, Devs do not balance around IO's. They acknowledge them, sure, but the primary metric is Single Origin Enhancements. Suppose I should rephrase it to "Dev's do not balance around IO's, mostly..." but that seems wishy-washy.

It's basically the same argument that was made in favor of Brute nerfs.

How can the Brute have more HP and do equivalent or more damage in some circumstances?


I think the balance issues between Stalkers and Scrappers are much greater than the balance issues between BS and Katana.

The differences between BS and Katana are pretty minimal for anyone who isn't a high end performance focused player.

Stalkers on the other hand bring nothing to a team that wouldn't be better filled by a Scrapper.

I don't disagree with that. But I also responded in PM as this is a bit off-topic. I don't agree however that a similar situation doesn't exist between brutes and Scrappers.

TL;DR - Unlike any other two Scrapper sets, it can be directly apples to apples compared with Katana, and we then find that damage output slightly favors Katana in single-target, multi-target and arguably burst damage.

And now the wall of text.

The consensus that Broad Sword lags Katana by a bit tends to hinge on a few basic things:

• DPS for the good attack chains favors Katana
• AoE favors Katana with the radius PBAoE doing more damage faster with the same recharge, and the arc PBAoE doing at least better DPA with a faster recharge
• Even burst damage, generally considered better on Broad Sword, is ONLY better if you consider a burst to be a single attack, maybe two. Some people do define it this way, but I suspect most of the forum regulars would consider a burst to be more in the 5-10 second range. I personally would say about 10 seconds, or the duration of Build Up. On time scales like that, Katana is better at burst damage.
• Faster attacks allow Katana to take better advantage of procs and Interface, as they get more chances to fire in a given period of time.
• Parry and Divine Avalanche are identical powers, so no advantage to either set there.

So to summarize, Katana is better than Broad Sword at single-target and multi-target damage output, and is arguably better at burst damage. Broad Sword appears to have no advantage at all, unless that advantage is something like "can be used with Shield Defense" or a more personal preference like "I like the animations" or "I like seeing big orange numbers".

Since these differences are actually quite small (as someone said, relevant probably only to number-crunching min/maxers), most people are proposing minor buffs, and most of these buffs seem to be of the form of giving Broad Sword an unarguable advantage at burst damage, while perhaps at least making it lag less at DPS and AoE.

Now on to specific comments:

I hope that's true, though obviously one started. I'm hoping I can clarify the situation a little. Hopefully we can get everyone on the same page. My writing, unfortunately, probably won't be good enough for that. It's worth trying, though.

Which, I agree, is a terrible reason for a buff. I think this thread assumed familiarity with the general body of Scrapper forum knowledge, which includes the things mentioned above. It perhaps would have been better had these been mentioned explicitly, but it was also something that could be explained later in the thread as necessary, so I'm not blaming the OP for anything here. I probably wouldn't have posted a highly-detailed rationale either had this been my thread, except with the benefit of hindsight.

It isn't, particularly if you don't have Arcanatime turned on. There's really no magical value. What there is is an analysis of damage done, typically broken into three semi-separate areas - DPS, AoE and burst. There's no particularly simple way to analyze these in the general case (unless you consider burst to be a single-attack deal). However, we HAVE done the analysis in a large number of threads over the years. I should also point out that when I say "DPS" I mean "single-target damage over time" and not "the DPS figure reported by Mids' or in game", as that considers damage and recharge in a way that is unrealistic for anything but the very early portion of the game.

Spines sucks at DPS. Spines excels at AoE damage. It is decent at burst damage.

It's interesting how much people can argue when we're basically on the same page. It doesn't need a buff. It's a good set, even if it's arguably on the low end or even the worst set (I probably wouldn't argue that personally). Something has to be worst, in any case. But it is in a unique position of being "easily" compared in damage output to Katana, as every power is functionally pretty much identical. In this comparison, it is arguably slightly behind in all areas of damage output. So we think it could use a minor buff.

A very legitimate fear in my opinion.

This is irrelevant to most metrics anyone cares about - let's say average damage over a certain time period. Let's say Broad Sword has one attack that takes 4 seconds and does 400 damage. Let's say Katana has two attacks that take 2 seconds each and each do 220 damage.

At 100% chance to hit, 440 vs. 400 = 10% better
At 95% chance to hit, 418 vs. 380 = 10% better
At 50% chance to hit, 220 vs. 200 = 10% better

Since the chance to hit is applied to all attacks, the number of attacks is irrelevant to average damage done over time... until you start getting into more sophisticated arguments like procs and wasted blow through damage.

Continuing the above example, let's add a proc that has a 20% chance of doing 100 points of damage. Let's say 95% chance to hit since it won't make a difference, and that's what we typically assume when calculating DPS. For each attack, the proc does an average of 95% * 20% * 100 = 19 points of damage. With two attacks in the Katana "chain", we add it twice there, and only once to the Broad Sword "chain".

456 vs. 399 = 14% better

So adding procs to the mix improves Katana more than Broad Sword, and increases the gap between them. I'm not saying the effect is huge in practice, but it's there.


DPA comparisons of all attacks in a set is a mostly irrelevant metric, but even on what I'd consider more relevant metrics, I consider Katana to be a middle of the pack set for damage, elevated to a great set (with some secondaries) due to Divine Avalanche. Broad Sword I consider a low end set for damage, elevated to a good set due to Parry. Broad Sword doesn't really need a buff over all. It is only in comparison to Katana, its closest competitor due to their similarity, that we see that it might be appropriate to buff.

But if you were suggesting what I think you were, I'll agree that it's a dangerous game buffing a set that I think is already at least middle of the pack. Arguably, we might nerf Katana instead, but the general trend for the past few years has been cautiously upward. I would expect a small buff to Broad Sword rather than a Katana nerf. Arguments for other sets needing buffs would be separate from this thread, whether or not those arguments might even be stronger than the argument for a Broad Sword buff.

We're talking about game balance, set balance. That has nothing to do with whether people like the set or not. But if it matters to you, I have two Broad Sword characters at 50, and my Broad Sword/Shield Defense was the most fun I've had leveling 1-50. But fun is subjective, and isn't what we use to balance the sets. We're talking about objective, verifiable differences between highly-comparable sets.

And the sort of DPA comparison that you did is much less relevant to a balance discussion than a comparison of the DPS of good/common attack chains, and AoE damage output, and burst damage output. And we aren't shooting for sets being the same in all three areas, so we get into a fairly subjective area of questions like "How important is DPS in comparison to AoE?" Even worse, we get into questions like, "What is more valuable, Siphon Life or Parry, and by how much?" But we don't need to delve into these sorts of questions if Broad Sword is actually behind in all three areas with no compensating advantage, as seems to be the case, and since Broad Sword's powers are functionally identical to Katana's.

Ack! Yeah, DPA arguments aren't really what this is about. If that IS Geko's core argument, I'd suggest that the DPA difference isn't relevant except in context - DPS, AoE and burst damage output. I should probably reread the OP, but I'm personally approaching this from years of forum calculation and test and consensus, not on some specific point in some specific post.

I think the real argument is more along the lines of what I stated at the top of this post. That said, a DPA argument (which I am NOT making) WOULD be much more relevant to a comparison of Katana and Broad Sword specifically because their powers are functionally identical. The same cannot be said of Spines. They are drastically functionally different. The result is that Spines excels at AoE and is poor at DPS (and burst is questionable, as it would be good at burst AoE and only mediocre at burst single-target, and I haven't felt the need to draw a distinction before, but of course there is one). Now, how do we compare a set that is good at AoE and poor at DPS to, say, a set that is bad at AoE and good at DPS? That gets very subjective, and depends on play style, what you normally fight, and so on. Apples to oranges, as already mentioned. But when comparing Broad Sword and Katana, we're comparing apples to apples in a way that no other two Scrapper sets can be compared.

I suspect you feel like Geko is setting up goal posts (compare by DPA) and then moving them (you can't compare by DPA because AoE makes it apples to oranges). But you can compare Katana and Broad Sword by DPA (because the powers are functionally identical) and can't compare either to Spines so simply (because the powers do very different things). Again, DPA isn't what matters (and now you probably think I'm moving the goal post, where I'm really just pointing out that it wasn't where you were told it was), but the same argument applies to what does matter.

Agreed, both are mostly worthless except to tell us that these two sets are not easily compared.

Now try making a list of the things that Broad Sword has that Katana doesn't, or vice versa. You'll find that they're all things that are relatively comparable, because the arcs, buffs, debuffs, knockup and so on all match. That makes it much more of a straight comparison of damage output. Even damage output comparisons tend to be complicated, as we get into questions like whether AoE or DPS damage is better. But this, too, doesn't apply to the Broad Sword vs. Katana comparison, since Broad Sword arguably loses to Katana in the three main categories of damage output.

Basically, you haven't won an argument by knocking down a DPA straw man, whether or not that straw man was set up by someone else, and whether or not you knew it was a straw man. I think I understand exactly where you're coming from, though, and certainly don't blame you for knocking the straw man over. I'm just pointing out that knocking it over hasn't changed anything really.

And assuming your posts have been made in seriousness, I'm sorry for the names you've been called. Your tone has been confrontational, so probably people felt provoked and their reactions might be considered reasonable, but trying to read this thread as I suspect you're reading it, I can understand why your tone has been confrontational. I'm hoping I've clarified rather than confused the issue, but it's hard for me to know.