Titan Weapons...smashy fun..but..

The title says it all really. I have a toon with every melee set we have, so naturally I got TW and decided on a tw/ea brute.

Now, I am going to list a few points here, good and bad..just looking to see if any agrees, or perhaps I am being overly critical.

The weapons are only useable with it point Left (I think?). Why can't we have them pointing the other way?

It is all Smash damage, with a few lethal dots...when you have a BIG sword, that doesnt make a huge deal of sense. Would have been nice to see the smashy type weapons do smash with lethal dot, and the blade types do lethal with smash dot..

The cones with the extra range are really good..fits with the big weapon theme, but they are all 5 targets max! Kinda dumb if your huge sword can only someone, stupidly hit 5 people. Compare with the dual blades tier 9, that has 10 targets and extended range.

The AoE. I was sure I read somewhere in the Beta forums, the aoe had a larger radius than other aoes. Maybe I didn't....the point is..it SHOULD have a 20 ft, at least, radius. Especially when you are limited to using it when you have MO. In comparison to Footstomp, it does less damage..and even has a DoT portion. Am I expecting it to be the new FS? Do I want it to be? No idea. I LOVE the animation for this power, to bad the radiusand damage seem lacking for how cool it looks.

The animations themselves. Ok, I get it..weapons as big as players, they IS going to be clipping issues. But pretty much every attack, if you queue it up and you are not facing the target, your avatar does some weird insta spin and ends up waving the weapon in weird directions.

NPC reactions. I think the Street Justice set has totally spoiled my here, but TW just isnt cutting it. Quite a few StJ powers, namely the aoe, cause baddies to stagger and move back, under the impact of the hits. Ok..so, a kick to the head makes people stagger, but hitting them with a 10foot pole, they just grit their teeth and take it on the chin?

Again, maybe I am just being picky. I like the set, I really do. But..

The cones and AoEs are limited in number of targets to match every other set. Removing or loosening those restriction would make this set vastly overpowered.

Whirling Smash is almost a FootStomp clone, with the DoT (which goes off 85% of the time) it does basically the same damage and has a 75% KD chance while FS has 80%.

I agree that at least Arc of Destruction should hit 10 mobs tho. The radii and range of the powers look fine to me.

Yeah, when a sword reaches a certain mass, it's not cutting any more, it's just smashing.

This set is pretty much OP as it is. I've never been able to take on a x8 spawn with any character at level 16 before.

Yes, it's smashing damage. I don't really consider that a problem, especially when players have said they don't care about the damage type they're doing if it meant getting the weapon skin they want (ie...Dual Blunt Objects for Dual Blades).

While not true for every player, what is?

I just use my imagination on this one.

There's awesomeness and then there's really damn OP. Every cone having a 120 degree arc, and there's three of them, and one PBAOE. That's a slot of AOE. It's still limited to the usual AOE target cap many other melee sets are limited on.

As for the PBAOE, that's a 15ft range PBAOE, that's bigger than every other melee PBAOE except for Footstomp. So, it does have a larger AOE radius compared to most melee PBAOEs.

I see lots of enemies being knocked down myself for enemy reaction.

You also have a set capable of high ST DPS and great AOE.

The set is fun, and it looks like they made a new set that is indeed made to be up there in the top three instead of somewhere in the middle.

It would be cool if some characters were randomly left-handed and VIP status bestowed you with the ability to change your character's handedness, but that's not really a significant gain for the effort. Granted there are other things they've done that might seem to be little gain for the effort, but whatever.

changing the damage type by weapon model - that's a bit crazy. costume parts shouldn't be tied to gameplay mechanics.

I have a new titan tanker and a titan brute and they're both loads of fun.

It may only be 5 targets, but that 120 degree, 10 ft long arc makes a gigantic difference. Most melee cones are only 45 degrees, so you have to be careful in lining them up, and while they CAN hit 5 targets the area is so small that you can usually only get 3 at best. With Titan Weapons you have to struggle to hit only 1 target; you'll usually get 2 and it's very easy to hit a full 5.

Broadsword's Slice is 130 degrees, but only 7 feet in range, and with the way cones work that extra 3 feet is a significant area. (130 degrees 7 feet is 105 square feet, 120 degrees 10 feet is 173 square feet.) Arc of Destruction is as powerful as Headsplitter, but Headsplitter has a 10 feet 19 degree arc. You're lucky to get 2 targets into that.

So yeah, the max targets is unchanged, but the ability to hit the max targets is vastly improved. I'm seriously hard-pressed to think of any other powerset, melee or ranged, that has this much AOE potential. Possibly Fire Blast, then Crab Soldiers, but it's a close race.

You know what? I rerolled a level 50 Boradsword character to remake her as Titan Weapons, so it feels like that might be a good comparison. And a comparison I want to make, because when I looked at the Titan Weapons numbers - the scale damage numbers - I was a big... Schocked, for lack of a better word.

Let's start with Defensive Sweep. That's scale 0.729, which isn't a lot, but it's not very little, either. Your typical "light" damage attack is scale 0.64, so this is stronger AND it has the recharge and cost of a small attack. Not quite, but close.

Crushing Blow is what surprised me first. That's scale 1.804. These are Disembowel numbers, even if Disembowel itself is at 1.9. I get Disembowel at level 1 with Titan weapons.

Then there's Titan Sweep. That's scale 1.429, and listed as "heavy," which it is. A typical heavy attack - like Broadsword's Hack - is 1.64, so close. Whirling Sword is 1.0 and Slice is 1.23, so I get a stronger Slice with more range.

Then there's Follow Through at 2.156. That's above Disembowel levels and reaching for Head Splitter levels, and I get that at level what? 8? Yikes! Hell, Follow Through is about on the same level of damage as Power Burst.

Then there's Rend Armour at 3.212. Broadsword doesn't have anything even remotely close. The biggest single attack Broadsword has access to is Head Splitter at 2.6. Rend Armour is a stone's throw away from Total Focus damage.

Then there's Whirling Smash. At 1.15 scale damage, it's not that much, but it's still more than Whirling Sword AND has about double the range - 15 for Whirling Smash to 7 or 8 for Whirling Sword.

Finally, there's Arc of Destruction at 2.596, which is almost identical to Head Splitter, only with a much larger area of coverage. Head Splitter is at 2.6 scale damage with a 10-foot, 19-degree cone while Arc of Destruction is almost the same damage with a 10-foot, 120 degree arc.

Honestly, these numbers scare me a little bit. I'm not sure how these numbers are could be set so high, but I guess momentum as a balancing mechanic is the reason, especially given Synapse's feedback in Beta. I think this may well be the first time that a gimmick has vastly improved a set, or at most the second time, if we count Street Justice. I remember sets like Dual Pistols and Shield Defence who had to pay a price for their gimmick, and yet Titan Weapons seems to have benefited a great deal for its.

And it's not "just numbers," either. I've been playing this set on Live and I played it on Beta, and it's pretty much the strongest a character of mine has ever been put over, or if it isn't the strongest I haven't seen that in years. Single-target damage, which I was initially worried about, is no problem. The set has such huge single-target burst I have trouble transcribing it, plus Defensive Sweep is cheap enough to use as single target to fill in an attack chain. AoE is even better, and I don't even have Arc of Destruction yet. With Momentum, this set can deliver a LOT of AoE damage, and with those huge cones, doing so has never been easy. Sure, it's still hard-locked by the 5-target limit, but I can't imagine how broken this set would be without that limit. It's amazing even with it.

I'm starting to worry it's making the rest of the melee sets look bad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sam, out of curiousity, how does it compare to Battle Axe?

My TW/EA Brute is a AoE killer... fun and very aggressive. TW is a nice powerset with good damage and enough tools to stand alone against mobs or bosses/AV/EB.

Re-draw animation is long on some attacks with the exchange to have massive damage and knock down in return.

The only thing i could address is the sound fx for the power set. On my opinion the sound doesn't feel like smashing and cutting things in the game.

So far my only complaints with TW is performance on a couple of trials. On BAF, prisoners run past me before I can windup and are dead before I connect. On MoM, I have died quiet often by animation which irks me to no end.

Lambda and TPN are fun with TW. I haven't hit UG or Keyes yet with her.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

Why do I keep misreading the thread title as "Smashy butt fun"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Just got Arc of Destruction..VERY nice power..in fact, I can see why it is not more targets. The animation for it rocks to..this and Whirling Smash seem to look the best.