A Message to the Criminals, from an EM Player

Speaking of /Ice melee, I'd like to point out that it's a great experiment in finding somebody that will complain about any change. Despite three years of data gathering, complaining on the forums about needed changes, and many in-game experiments showing how bad the set was, we still didn't find anyone who thought the set was good as-was. That is, until the changes were made to the set.

Only after the changes were made (adding some range to Frost, damage to Frozen Aura) did someone pop up saying that they used the sleep effect to do a bit of farming in the Shadow Shard. But they only used it in certain circumstances, admitted that it only worked for certain Tanker primaries, and that they didn't use it in normal gameplay. Despite all that, they were ticked that the power got changed to add damage, because it ruined their very specific farming situation that they had developed just for it. The set was HORRIBLE, is only barely passable now with the changes, but people still argued against the changes.

You can't please everyone. You shouldn't try. If a set needs fixing, better to go with the easiest way to do it, rather than make some sort of convoluted new mechanic for the set that people might not like either. Not many people are too thrilled with the mechanic added to Gravity Control, and having that mechanic makes it harder to make better changes to the set.

This is true. There will always be some one upset with something. The thing is not about avoiding to upset anyone. The goal is to avoid taking anything away from anyone.

Balance wise, Energy Transfer is a great power with it's only true fault being the self damage if used on dead enemies.

Taking away from players can be a bad thing, especially if it's to address edge cases on specific situations.

Adding a new mechanic to address issues may be disliked, but it's not taking away just adding on top. Some one that does not like a new mechanic can ignore it, just like a blaster can entirely ignore the new buffs being added to to their secondaries.

Also to keep in mind, it's not me that you have to convince about adding a shorter animation, it would be the devs that follow strict rules on certain things. Due to EM already having excelent single target damage output, it's very unlikely they will do anything that will boost this damage further.

Now, that aside, this is something that just crossed my mind:

With Water Blast, they added a new mechanic to the game, the ability for one power to entirely reset the recharge timer of another power. It crosses my mind it would be useful if a power like energy transfer or total focus reset their own recharge timers if they did not manage to land any damage on the enemy because it was dead before they finished casting (in adition to ET not doing self damage.) Perhaps, in such a case, i can see also using Titan Weapon's redirect mechanic to compound this. Example:

You start Energy Transfer on target.
Target Dies before you are done.
You suffer no self damage.
Energy Transfer recharge resets.
Now you have 10 seconds to use Energy Transfer with it's old animation.

The idea here is simply that you "charged up" the energy in the first animation but ended up not needing it because the target died. You retain that energy in your body for 10 seconds, allowing you to cast a much faster energy transfer in another target.

Actually.... I can also see this being acceptable for missing, although not for overkills. If you miss the target after such an animation, you should be able to follow up with a fast attack to recover that lost DPS. Note, the follow up can also still miss and end up going wasted, but that aliviates the huge DPS hole missing can cause on such a heavy hitting set (something I find funny has not been brought up in the thread yet.)

This does not actually boost DPS, since it only works in situations where failure would had caved a big hole in your damage output, it also does not take anything away from players today.

Similar mechanic may also work for Total Focus, and that power may be in a more dire need for it.

I want to clarify two things here:

1. One is that it's not me that you need to convince of a change, it's Synapse and Hawk. They respect the Cottage rule and are very unlikely to break it without a strong reason. EM does not have a strong reason, it would if it's DPS was as low as Ice, but not in it's current state.
2. I am also not Synapse nor do I know him so I cant tell you if he really will be willing to break rules beyond what I know. My attempt here is to set a mindset for proposals that have a higher chance to be looked at. Animation changes don't have a zero % chance of happening, but for EM, the odds are not in favor of such change.

I reviewed the power (not the set as a whole yet) and it seems Whirling Smash does appropiate damage for a 14s recharge attack that has a 8.4ft radius: 1.15

Titan Weapons as a whole, though, gets bonus reach on all it's powers.

The power also gets an extra DOT, with an 85% chance of triggering that can cancel on miss (similar to Fire). This is a common secondary effect for blade attacks that represents bleeding.

Unlike other bleeding effects seen in Broad Sword and Katana's PBAoE, though, this one is toned down to cancel on miss and have only a 85% chance. Those other powers have a 100% chance to trigger.

The whole point of calculating DPA is so you can decide if the faster-animating lower-damage power is better for DPS than the slower-animating higher-damage power, but it does ignore things like corpse-blasting.

Yes, Arcanatime changes this. Remember that you're losing at least one 0.132 second server tick every time a power activates, so chaining powers is inherently less efficient.

Energy Punch scale 1 @ .83 = 1.056 seconds. (DPA of 0.947)
Bone Smasher scale 1.64 @ 1.5 = 1.716 seconds. (DPA of 0.956)
Barrage scale 1.32 @ 1.33 = 1.584 seconds. (DPA of 0.833)

These powers have a combined scale damage of 3.96 in 4.356 seconds, for a DPS of 0.909. Barrage really is hurt since the 1.33 second animation means that it loses almost 2 full ticks because of the rounding (always up to the next tick). If Barrage's animation were 0.01 seconds faster it would evenly line up with the ticks and be 11 ticks instead of 12, giving it a DPA of 0.909 and the whole chain would be at 0.9375.

If you get the recharge to cycle EP->BS->EP, you do scale 3.64 damage in 3.828 seconds, for a DPS of 0.951. Better than with Barrage, but let's look at Total Focus.

Total Focus is scale 3.56 @ 3.3 = 3.432 seconds. (DPA of 1.037)

What causes the changes for Stalkers is that Total Focus doesn't critical for full value, and Energy Punch and Bone Smasher do. This affects the DPA order when you factor in a higher critical rate, so that with 2 people in range to give the boost (16% critical rate), you get the following:

TF: (3.56 + (0.16 (critical rate) * 1 (critical scale value))) / 3.432 = 1.084
BS: (1.64 + (0.16 * 1.64)) / 1.716 = 1.109
EP: (1 + (0.16 * 1)) / 1.056 = 1.098

So the DPA order shifts around based on team size and position for Stalkers - at even 2 people in range both Bone Smasher and Energy Punch exceed Total Focus's DPA and it's more efficient to chain them.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

It wasn't added with Water Blast, that was just the first time it was used in a Ranged set and the first time that the power was resetting its own timer. Kinetic Melee said to say "hi", but Burnout was pouting and crying off in the corner.

To address another point, Whirling Smash also is restricted in use to when you have Momentum built up, in which case DPA is hardly a consideration for the entire set as a whole. It has its own gimmick, but it shatters the rules that you're talking about being unlikely to break.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

KinMele has that? As I said, got to catch up with the Post-GR sets. Was away for a while

That explains a bit! I have not leveled my Titan Weapons tank to get there yet. Have been slowly leveling a WP/Street Justice tank, holding XP turned off, attemtping to do as much Pretoria content as possible. Still ended missing two contacts... /sigh

Well, based off what I saw and posted in my last post, it does not seem to break the rules, other than having more radius than it should and, again, that being a set wide feature.

Bleeding DOT damage has always been considered bonus and not restricted by damage/recharge/radius formulas.

I agree. Taking away is bad. And since the feel of the set was taken away long ago, I'd like to see it added back. Even if it's only in small doses. I don't expect big hitting powers to have super short animations, but if we can give it that more active and fast-paced feel, that to me sounds like a good thing. The set used to be a little more "buzz saw" and a lot less "stop and wait".

I hope to convince the devs that some limited restoration might be in order, so long as it's balanced.

This is something that actually bothers me a lot. I understand there has to be a certain limit to how much damge a single attack can do, but I think a power that has it's critical portion artificially reduced this way should have an equally higher critical rate chance, so that, in average, the attack gets the same benefit out of the boost as the rest of the set's powers.

This is also, my understanding, something that is holding sets like Stone Melee and Energy Melee from going to scrappers. They dont want the sets doing too much damage in criticals but they Synapse seems to not be happy with the reduced critical solution as it stands either.

I ask you: do you like the sound of missing with either (TF or ET) resetting recharge and changing to super fast versions on the event of corpse blast or missing?

I think it may even be acceptable if it's a shared trait:

TF misses, TF recharge resets and you get to pick using fast TF or fast ET.
ET misses, ET recharge resets and you get to pick using fast TF or fast ET.

Concentrated Strike resets Power Siphon on Scrappers (at a higher-than-standard 20% rate) and Build Up on Stalkers (at their normal rate afaik) when it criticals. This means that a KM Stalker with the chance for hide proc in AS can actually perma-BU until the i24 changes drop the rate from 100% chance to hide.

And "larger than normal AoE size" doesn't mean "nearly double the radius" for Titan Weapons. If it were 10' instead of 8' I might buy that side of the argument, and I wasn't including the damage over time as part of its damage because I know to ignore chance-for DoTs (guaranteed DoTs are part of the damage, which is why I included them in Whirling Sword and Lotus Drops).

I haven't seen the spreadsheets, nor am I basing the "breaking the rules" part on that. When KM was in beta, I was responded to by several people (I don't remember if one was Synapse or not) in the feedback thread while I was complaining about scale 1 damage in 8' for Burst, and they all stated that it followed the formula for a 14 second recharge AoE. Those posts would mean that 1.15 isn't correct and 1.0 is, but in any case 1.15 would still be a buff from where it is now (and Whirling Axe needs to be changed also).

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

They completely ignored it with Crushing Uppercut - at combo level 3 it hits harder on a critical than a Total Focus full-damage critical would. Which, incidentally, is also harder than a from-hidden Assassin's Strike.

And I've posted for years in support of Scrappers getting the Stalker version (with AS replaced with WH) of Energy Melee (which has significantly reduced stun chances, no-self-damage critical on ET, and reduced-damage critical on TF). I don't think it would be appropriate to give them the Tanker or Brute version with higher stun chances, add in a full damage critical for Total Focus (and/or Energy Transfer), and then not do the same for Stalkers.

Edit to respond to corpse-blasting "fast cast": I wouldn't mind it but I don't know that it's okay on a miss (might be a bit OP relative to other sets), and I think that there may be data access issues with determining if it's a corpse-blast or not that would depend on underlying engine changes and as such be outside of the powers realm. The power can tell whether or not to run a line item based on success or failure at the time of activation (see: Scourge), I'm just not sure that the check to run the line item would have access to mob state at the time damage is dealt (which is why individual DoTs in an already-activated power such as Gloom can't Scourge but new activations can).

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

The dev that said that was incorrect.

The damage formula is:
=((Recharge*0.16)+0.36)/(1 + 0.75 * Radius/5 - (0.011 * Radius/6) * (360 - Arc)/5)

This sets a 8ft radius attack with 14s recharge at 1.18. (1.181818181818181818181818181818181818[...] to be exact)

There are quite a few powers that have this mathamatical error, and I would not be shocked if a dev would think that was the case if they just grabbed a power like Whirling Hands and copy-pasted it.

1.15 is too low for an 8ft radius PBAoE, but seems to fit an 8.4ft radius PBAoE.

BTW, all this means a lot of the Whirling attacks are doing less damage than they should. Doing a quick check now on that too see how many we talking about.

I just looked at Burst and seems whoever was working on this realized it, because at 15s recharge, it has 1.25 ds damage, appropiate for the radius.

As for the extra range, it's 6.6ft longer than it should. Titan Weapon attacks tend to have between 2 and 3 extra feet per attack. My guess is the much larger bonus to radius is offset by requiring being inside Momentum to use it.

Well, I like the sound of it, yes. But there are a couple of issues with this.

1. I still have to wait through an animation that takes quite a long time. Then have to miss, before getting a chance to hit again very fast. This doesn't exactly recover the "fast-paced" feel considering you're still waiting through one long animation from the beginning, then getting consolation prizes when it misses.

2. If you're slotted for a lot of accuracy, you won't see this option that often.

I'd be happier with shorter animations. BUT, I'd be willing to entertain the idea of a mechanic that allows you to get shorter animations under certain conditions. Something like Momentum, but it doesn't have to be exactly the same.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying you don't think the system can detect a corpse blast. But it actually might. Remember, Twilight Grasp used to fail if the target died while it was activating. So there might be something there to use to build a detection for corpse blasting.

...maybe.

I can think of a few "workarrounds" to this. One is adding a extremely small delay to all effects (including damage) that check for enemy health. An effect that occurs on a delay will check for the current target state, not the state at the time of activation.

Edit: as for balance in missing, I must look more into the idea, but the idea of these powers having increased base accuracy is in itself an acknoledgement it hurts much more to have them miss than having a regular attack miss. It's not just about wasted time per cast, but also endurance.

The reason Gloom can't scourge individual ticks is the way it's implemented. It's done with one big effect flaged as damage that gets delivered over time. The properties of such an effect are determined at first land.

Right now, this is how the scourge bit looks like in City of Data:
8 * 9.18 Negative damage every 0.5s over 3.6s

Now, it would be possible to change it to do this:

9.18 Negative damage
9.18 Negative damage after 0.5s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 1.0s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 1.5s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 2.0s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 2.5s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 3.0s delay
9.18 Negative damage after 3.5s delay

This version has a lot more checks on the server, but would result in a dynamic scourge effect that gets evaluated on every "tick".

Twilight Grasp summons a pseudopet around the caster that does the heal, and didn't fail if the target died (only if the caster did). Transfusion and Transference were the ones that failed if the target died, and probably due to the inability to determine the location the pseudopet was supposed to spawn at. If it stores the location at activation, there's no need to check the mob's condition when it summons it.

The tech might be there already. I just doubt it.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Derp!

Yes, that's what I meant.

[edit] Well, a psuedo pet could be used if a feature like that was added. Activate ET: Psuedo pet spawns: if pet fails, grant shorter animation ET.

I don't think you will convince the devs that the set being slow paced is a valid issue to fix. You may, however, convince them that corpse blasting and missing on a set that puts so much damage on such slow attack, is a real issue.

Yes, and each line item would have to have its own "if Scourge" check to copy it (which is how Scourge works), and I still don't know that it wouldn't just run all the checks at once, pass/fail them on the mob condition at activation, and queue them into a delayed event to deal damage rather than wait for the delay and then check the way you expect it to.

Every power that currently Scourges does so because of mob condition at time of activation, and I'm unable to think of powers that have a delayed line item check where it would be obvious if the condition could change after activation to test the idea with. The rain powers simply activate a LOT of times very quickly by using a pseudopet (and turning DoTs into pseudopets attached to the target with a damage autopower would artificially lower the Corruptor damage cap).

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

If it was valid to completely change the feel of a set before when it was broken, then it's valid to revert even a part of that feel if it's now considered under-performing. As long as balance is achieved I don't think it's as unlikely as you paint it.

The fix that causes the pseudo-pet to be summoned whether the target lives or dies (a la Transfusion/Transference) would actually prevent this method from working. It would never fail, so ... yeah. It's thinking outside the box to try to make it work, though, and would have worked if they hadn't fixed Kinetics.

It also doesn't fix the self-damage issue unless you simply have it deal damage and then have the pseudopet heal you, but that can have its own issues when you're low enough on life that ET could kill you since the heal would happen (and fail) after you're dead.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I am 90% sure it gets evaluated after the delay.

The pet may be the one inflicting damage if it had to.