My impression of Staff Fighting (numerical and otherwise)

You'd also get 6+ months of continued enjoyment of a character you claim to like, with no guarantee that it will actually be any worse after that time. Isn't that the point of the game? It seems odd to me to consider whether a character will be "worth it in the long run" since the only value you can possibly derive from a city of heroes character is the fun you have playing it.

Actually to say that "any" set is underpowered that can X8 kill is the real flaw here. You are only going to see underpowered from the unreal matrix of the narrow band of min/max people.

The people actually playing the game just don't play under that tight of a restrictive measurement.

EB and DB are not the highest damage sets for sure but they are not underpowered or they would not be X8 spawn clearing. If the only measure is who is on top everything but fire needs to go away and most people just don't view things as you do and the people playing the game daily show this to be true.

The vacuum you talk about is not, it is from actual seat time in the game. On the other hand you and a couple of others are going nuts over your vacuum based equations that just do not match up with the player base actually playing the set in the game.

I have nothing against advocating for changes that are needed. I just don't see the merit since I have been mowing down level 50+ +4 X8 spawns in AE and the new Dark Astoria on BETA since January and others that bought the set are doing the same.

If the devs feel that the set is underperforming then they will give it bump, I just don't think they feel anything near what two or three forumites with outliar views are saying. Not even close.

The false conclusion in that premise is that I would only gain enjoyment from that character. If I play another character, than I don't have any risk from the PPM change. Therefore it makes more sense to play and invest in another character knowing that the annoyance of the 90% cap will make that character considerably less fun. It will also save having to respect around the new rules, assuming I could level the Stalker to 50 and get him incarnated before the PPM change.

And since I still occasionally play many of my 50s, I generally see characters as investments, and I get annoyed at unneeded changes in playstyle. If you consider that the game has been around 8 years, is it really so odd that I don't want to play for 6 months and have a less fun character at the end? After all, the conceivable lifetime of a character is limited only by the lifetime of the game, and I don't want lose the potential for fun playing a character after that 6 months.

You misunderstood. The 'vacuum' I was referring to is the comparison of Staff by itself without reference to other sets. At this point in the game, virtually any set can defeat mobs at +4/x8 with sufficient investment (and course, don't discount the effect of the secondary). Therefore the question is not whether a character can play at that level but at what speed and level of investment. It is quite possible that Staff is underperforming relatively without underperforming absolutely, in that it still will be "good enough," but still below average for a melee set.

(and by the way, I HAVE played Staff to a fairly high level)

Here is the deal though mate. Staff is NOT underperforming under "ANY" metric except the min/max single target vacuum based perspective. Even the numbers people have posted support this fact. It is a average damage set overall and DOES NOT "suffer" from slow spawn killing, that is vacuum based made up stuff vs actually seat time in the game period.

The reality is there are only a few people that measure a set based on that narrow min/max pylon based perspective and the devs are not included in that group.

And this is not about having played the set but about the perspective of a min/max view going in and coming out that is the real issue here. That is a personal issue not powerset based issue.

You're the one who told me earlier in the thread that you could think of exactly three places in the entire game where you fight more than one boss at once and one of the ones that apparently sprung to mind was in Mercedes "Who?" Sheldon's arc. The thing I find hard to believe here is that you actually care as much about peak performance as you've been saying you do. If you're mainly running content where having sustained aoe isn't meaningful, how can you turn around and say you care deeply about a 10% reduction in stalker's guile's proc rate? You won't need to respec at all, just put the procs where they'll be best, double check with the PPM formula if you're really concerned, and there you are. One of them will some day become marginally less effective while most of them will probably be moderately buffed. It's a wash.

Maybe we're very different, you and I, but when I play my old characters it is for variety as my builds have steadily gotten better over time. If I don't even remember my slotting rationale for some dusty old defender yet I'm bringing it out anyway for a task force, I don't expect its performance to be already optimized for the current issue. That doesn't make it less fun to play.

Sure, if you ignore single target damage Staff is a good set. It does above average, but not spectacular AoE, at a steady, safe rate. But my experience in the game is that the only real difficulties/time-stops are the tough mobs like Bosses, EBs, and AVs. Strangely enough, single target is now arguably more important on large teams and leagues than AoE, a reversal of the old standard.

In my experience, low single target (and it is low) + good/above average AoE = slow unless you have bosses turned off. I know because I have characters that fit the description, such a Spines scrapper. In general, low single target damage does reduce damage output, because there are only so many minions/lts in a spawn.

Also, I'll repeat the fact that my suggested fix has other advantages than powerset balance. It also helps staff's strengths and should make it more fun to play enough for those that already find it fun.

See post #191

I don't dislike the change solely because of a fairly substantial loss of damage (possibly made up by an increase in other procs). I dislike it because the randomness is just spiteful and unfun to me. The proc already has a 10 sec cooldown, and added another to it makes it both annoying and potentially threatening. Say I'm fighting a tough boss/EB/AV, and need one Sky Splitter critical to defeat the critter, but have low life. If I miss AS and/or have the proc fail, I not only waste the attack, but have to make a decision whether or not to continue using regular attacks or use Sky Splitter without a guaranteed critical, and in the meantime the foe that should be dead has enough time to get in extra attacks that could kill me.

Simply put, the change has more effect than the numbers because it will force me to change my playstyle. Random chances for failure are NOT fun for me, and I don't want to make the transition from no-chance to 15% chance.

Well, let's assume a team full of damage dealers beating on a hard target with no other source of -DR than their one Staff Scrapper. Not a good assumption, I know, so I'll come back to that. Let's say they're not Scrapper Forum hot-rod builds, so they mostly pump out something on the order of 150 DPS.

Since we know that DPS after the DR debuff is DPS * (1 + debuff), the added DPS should be just DPS * debuff.

8 * 150 DPS * 0.075 = 90 DPS.

I don't think there's anything we could get the devs to do that would add something like 90 DPS to the baseline damage of Staff. (And as the team gets more hot-rod builds, it gets better.)

Now let's turn one of the characters into an actual debuffer of some kind. I'm going to completely make up their raw damage contribution and say it's 1/2 of the damage dealers' (75 DPS), but they add -30% DR.

7.5 * 150 DPS * (0.3 + 0.075) = 337.5 DPS + 84.375 DPS = 421.875 DPS

So the Staff character is adding about 84 DPS, which is still a lot, but is now a smaller part of the total DPS. The more sources of -DR you get on the team, the less each one contributes proportionally, and the Staffer(s) will add a smaller proportion of the debuffing pie. But even if it was one staffer and 7 debuffers...

4.5 * 150 DPS * (2.1 + 0.075) = 1417.5 + 50.625 DPS = 1468.125

That's still around 51 DPS added by the Staffer's debuff.

Nobody but you said anything about ignoring single target damage for staff. I have seen most people describing it as average and AOE as slightly above average with the combination working out well enough for many farmers to use them to farm. That is the kind of performance that does not rate as underperformance.

You guys hyperbole too much thus discrediting any serious consideration the devs "might" have given too the issues because you refuse to view it from "any" other perspective than the absolute fairy tale land of min/max, with emphasis on max and that is ridiculous as has been pointed out many times by many people here in the forums.

In the game the view set forth by min/max'ers is just not that prevalent and it certainly is not something for the devs to use as the measure of every new set.

Bosses slow everyone down period. The tools that set has for bosses is the same knockup juggle that other sets have as well and this set has no issues particularly handling bosses on a YMMV basis.

Anything is possible, but that assertion has yet to be demonstrated by any analysis I've seen so far.

It isn't zero to 15% though. It's going from 90% to 81% chance to successfully proc. Right now it's very, very possible for either AS or the subsequent attack to miss. And, as you note, a reasonable attack chain is shorter than ten seconds so it's only relevant half of the time in the first place. It's a minor reduction to something that is honestly a much more minor factor in current stalker builds than most people realize.

Like I said, I don't expect the actual performance drop to be major (indeed, it may buff most procs enough to be a net gain).

However, I hate this sort of mechanic with a passion. I was willing to put up with the silly 95% chance to tohit cap, because I have to deal with it on my other powers anyway. I was even willing to count the 10 second rule because most attack chains would basically make it an auto-proc every other chain. But make the proc random on top of that? Nuh-uh. That sort of percentage means that I'll have a 50-50 chance for a the proc to fail at least once per about 5 chains. Which means I'll be annoyed unnecessary failure very, very often.

It's something where I have to wait and see what the devs do. If they remove the 90% cap and the PPM change aren't incredibly invasive, I might reconsider and switch back to my stalker. But until then I'll focus on other projects.

Like I've said before, the level of proof you are asking for has never been a requirement for any underperforming set in the history of the game, to my knowledge. It involves variables that simply cannot be known without in-game experimentation or developer knowledge. All of which you probably know.

On a simpler level, it is fairly easy to easy that Staff's single target is limited by its low DPA attacks. It is much harder to prove that Staff's AoEs are below or above average because AoEs simply involve more variables. Using only the usable data in front of me, it is impossible for me to say that Staff is average or above average because its single target damage is so low without any ability to prove that the AoE is inversely high. Especially since any set can get so many AoEs from outside sources, but few strong single target attacks.

It's not like you have a choice in the matter other than not playing City of Heroes.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

You fail to define what you mean by "ridiculously". So far, all you have suggested is that Staff does marginally less damage that some other melee sets.

In my opinion, some variation in performance is both inevitable and desirable. It is the price we pay for creative freedom.

I have played MMOs where they tried ever so hard to make things balanced. They are boring and restrictive (and still fail).

I never have. I would rather a game be fun than be balanced. Isn't that why most people play CoH? To have fun?

Unless it's an e-sport things don't have to be finely balanced, and even than, balance is an unobtainable illusion.

And, so far, you have failed to provide any evidence that Staff cannot in any way "get the job done". I KNOW IT CAN, because I have played it. I've also played Titan Weapons, and that can get the job done too. It may or may not produce more DPS, but I don't look closely at the numbers and it's not enough to notice otherwise. What I do notice is that Staff is MORE FUN than Titan Weapons, since it gives more choices, and isn't such a pain to micro-manage endurance.

You might not be "trying" to kill play-styles, but killing play-styles is the inevitable consequence of your agenda. Equality is the enemy of diversity. Look what happened to PvP in the name of "balance and equality".

At that point, my arguments towards you were in the general sense, not the specific. You can use your argument to fight ANY calls for a buff. If that is a case, and I accept your argument in the general term, it means that buffing is intrinsically bad. That isn't an acceptable idea to me, so I disagree with your general idea, regardless of whether Staff is a specific set that qualifies for the criteria.

Again, you use an argument that could be applied to ANY set.

You also make a point that is not logical. Balance and fun are not either/or propositions, regardless of your personal experience. An 'ideal' game would be perfectly balanced AND have enough different playstyles to support a maximum level of fun. In a real world, we cannot reach perfection in either, but not because fun and balance are at polar ends of a spectrum.

You also fail to notice that I did not ask for 'perfect' balance.

In that post, I was specifically referring to a variety of sets, most specifically Devices, that are considered to be both 'tactical' and underperforming. I did not mention staff in that argument, though I did mention PBs, Stalkers pre-buff, Blasters, Ice Melee, and Devices. Staff may or may not fit that mold but the argument is valid regardless. You argued that those sets do not need and/or will never need a buff because some people like them. Therefore your argument is that if 'some' people like a set, it doesn't need a buff. That argument is not a true argument.

Now, let's shift back to the specific. Let's look at exactly what I'd like to happen:

• Buff Form of Body so that it has the same magnitude bonus as Form of Soul
• Buff Form of Mind so that it has the same magnitude bonus as Form of Soul (maybe consider revamping some of the effects to make it more useful)

You cannot claim that I am eliminating playstyles for Staff with that proposal. If anything, that would increase the versatility of staff by making the forms more balanced and equally useful.

Now, about the idea that "Equality is the enemy of diversity."

...

No. That cannot be applied in real life and it cannot be applied here. Completely ignoring how that sounds from a real-life perspective (bad), it doesn't work in a video game in the specific or general case.

The greater the imbalance in power between two sets, the less choice we have between those two sets. Take Ice Melee and SS. SS is arguably the most popular melee set in the game, and has been for almost the entire lifespan of the game. Ice Melee is very similar to SS, if SS didn't have Rage. Ice Melee is one of the rarer sets to see in-game in my experience.

A lot of people might want to play Ice Melee, but do not because of the power imbalance. Ice Melee might present a lot of fun or interesting abilities that SS lacks. But people choose SS because power defeats choice.

The reason we buff and nerf in this game is to try and create the greatest number of options for people. A lot of people never played Energy Aura before it was buffed, simply because it was considered weak. A lot of people didn't Stalkers because they were thought to be weak. When /Regen was crazy OP, it overshadowed the other options so much that it was definitely one of the most popular.

Eliminating balance concerns almost always increases choice, in that people feel less pressure to play a certain set or avoid a certain set because of performance fears.

And as for the PvP argument, one could argue that the I13 change actually resulted in a less balanced playstyle that more heavily favored highly specific builds while changing the playstyle for everyone regardless of balance changes. So one could argue that PvP became worse BECAUSE it became less balanced.

Because there is none.

Yes it has, because its been reached many times in the past. I don't know what you're representing that requirement as in terms of unknown variables, but proper, rigorous analysis has demonstrated powersets to be underperforming in the past. Specifically for offensive sets, in the case of Broadsword, for example, or Archery. Or the non-domination-boosted offense of the entire Dominator archetype. I successfully made the argument three separate times for three separate versions of Martial Arts.

Your analysis just seems to mash numbers up, and you seem to believe there's nothing between mash numbers up and omniscience. More conservative and accurate analyses have been done in other situations that were sufficiently compelling to be considered probative.

Can you link your arguments so that I might attempt to copy/dissect them?

After all, part of the reason my arguments may have been flawed could be a lack of experience or examples to draw from. After all, the title of the thread was "my impression", not "A complete mathematical analysis of how Staff Fighting is underpowered".

Remember, I haven't had 100s of hours of gameplay on the various forms of Staff in order to test comparisons. ALL I have is data analysis. Asking me to provide a complete proof in such a short of amount time practically WOULD require me to be omniscient.

Guess you aint herd the maxim "if it aint broke, don't fix it". Tinkering with things that people are happy with is always a bad move.

In this case, I think that, based on your personal playstyle, and unfamiliarity with the interaction with various defense sets, you are massively overrating FoS in comparison to FoM, or FoB's resistance buff.

Any you critique of Arcana's analysis will make a good companion piece to Homer Simpson's deconstruction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

To the contrary, even people happy with the set's performance don't necessarily like the difference in magnitude between the difference Forms.

Remember, my actual play experience has mostly been on a stalker, without the benefit of FoS and FoM. My analysis of the impact of FoS vs the other abilities has mostly come from commentators in this thread, ex:


As for the comment about Arcanaville, I'm not trying to say I'm smarter or right more often than Arcanaville, and I'm certainly not more popular on these programs or as great a contributor. None of that, however, guarantees that my opinion is incorrect or that changes I've suggested would not improve staff or its balance in relation to other sets.

(Also, its funny you mention Einstein's Theory of General Relatively, as I actually have a fair amount of background in physics but none at all in statistics)

Probably eaten by the forum grues by now.


You keep suggesting people are asking for some "complete proof" as if the critiques so far have been unreasonable, but you haven't acknowledged basic fundamental errors in your analysis which generate wildly incorrect results. You seem, if anything, to believe they should be overlooked as being irrelevant to the point of the analysis. But as you point out, rarely is an analysis absolutely perfect, so the critical goal of any analysis should be to build credibility that the conclusion generated is a safe one. Usually, that's done by being conservative, and when erring always attempting to err on the side *opposite* that of the conclusion. You very obviously don't do that; instead you reach for the conclusion by first assuming its true, and then looking for numbers to support it. You still haven't told me what a player with nothing but Explosive Blast looks like under your revised AoE metric, and whether your analysis generates a reasonable result for that situation. You still haven't justified how having just one AoE for SS and Stone somehow translates into those two sets having more "AoE potential" according to your metric than many sets with provably higher AoE.

By not acknowledging, much less attempting to fix any of these anomalies, it seems you're metric-shopping: it looks like you're going to continue to invent metrics until you find one that generates the results you want.

As to the difference between your impressions and your analysis, you started by saying the set was more or less ok, perhaps with some issues, but as the thread progressed you started conflating "second tier" with "underperforming" in many contexts, and attempted to claim there was a strong numerical basis for that assertion. It is at that point that your numerical analysis became fair game for review and critique.

You misunderstand my repeated attempts at analysis. I'm not trying to find things to support my view, but trying to fix the inaccuracies of my methods. And even if I found one suitable to you, the same claim could be made. And most of the time I openly admitted that the methods I used were created hastily and with errors. So far, I am missing information I would need to create a more accurate AoE predictor, and don't have the time or resources to investigate Bruter/Tanker/Scrapper set in-game at all levels of recharge.

It should also be noted that I have NEVER said that Staff's AoE was underperforming. My claim was solely that the single target attacks was limited by low DPA, regardless of attempts to create an AoE metric to prove that the single target deficiency was not necessarily balanced by a greater amount of AoE. And regardless of how awful my attempts to find a good AoE metric have been, the single target damage deficiency shouldn't be in question. If it is, I definitely show a lack of single target damage at various levels of recharge, or at least more readily show that than AoE damage.