Powersets that need review

It was changed because the original design team didn't take animation times into account AT ALL when balancing powers. It was obviously OP since I first hit level 32. I didn't mind the nerf because I had been expecting it for something like a year.

As for the appearance of the animations, I preferred the replacement. It fitted my robot theme better.

OK. Show me. With numbers. Give me attack chain sequences showing how badly EM is outpaced by the other sets. Last I knew, it was still at or near the top for single target DPS and had solid mitigation due to the prevalence of stuns.

ET is not actually as slow as people think (2.67 seconds, comparable to most sets heavy hitters). Total Focus is the slow one. Staff is popular and has three powers with comparable length animations.

I think people don't play it simply because it doesn't look very interesting compare to modem sets - no gimmick, only one secondary effect. I also think it doesn't matter. Kinetic Melee is the replacement. EM only still exists as a legacy powerset.

Not better. A REPLACEMENT.

Same theme, same damage types, flashier animations and a gimmick.

Show me evidence that energy melee underperforms and I might listen to you.

I have several tanks. Fire/SS has better AoE, but it doesn't come close in ST damage.

I understand the requirement for evidence and people writing [citation needed] on what is controversial, but... oh hell. whatever.

AOE.

Whirling hands.

That's it.

AoE is irrelevance. EM is a ST set. Relevent evidence is that it's ST damage isn't one of the top performers.

My assumption is that when they made Shield Defense the devs were heavily influenced by Captain America. Cap uses his shield as an offensive weapon almost as much as he uses it for protection and that seems to have influenced the design of the set.

Thematically Shield Charge is compensation for the fact that it wasn't practical to make a shield-throwing power and the damage buff in AAO represents the character using the shield as a second weapon, shield bashing opponents to put them off-balance and let him get some strong hits in.

I never said it didn't work or it didn't make sense. It was just odd.

I brought it up precisely to demonstrate the point that different is good. Just because I expected and would still love a more defensive oriented armor set, doesn't mean Shield should be changed.

Just because I am an AoE nut and think control is overrated, doesn't mean EM should be changed.

Ice melee might need some help, I'll agree with that, but I think I'd much prefer you leave my Ax alone. By far one of my favs brutes...

Please, leave my Ax alone. And I'm pretty leery about TA getting messed with, too....

I've gotta agree here. Every set needn't appeal to everyone. I personally just can't get into Traps. Should it be buffed somehow? Changed, even? How about Warshades? I'm not overly fond of those, either. Change those? Buff them? Doubt it....

Be interested in hearing your reasons why. (NB, I am not disagreeing with you, I'm just interested.)


Oh, and I'm no major number cruncher, but I have tried comparing a few Fire Melee attack chains with Energy Melee attack chains, and as far as I can tell, EM is well ahead in terms of ST damage. Which does, I think, give it the highest single target damage available to tankers. If anyone else can show different, I would be interested to hear about that too.

*Steeples Fingers*

Yes, I'm curious as well.

Ax is almost identical to Mace, and nobody complains about Mace under-performing, that I have heard at least. Ax just trades disorient for more KU and KD, which, if you want to keep things close for PBAOE fun, is a better choice IMHO. Solid AOE, and solid single target, with lots of mitigation; what's not to like?


As for TA, it's fine at level 50. It's just an incredibly late bloomer. And, as far as I can tell, it's not seen as under-performing on Trollers (though my troller TA is only lvl 20ish, so I can't attest to this persoanlly), so it's only on Defs and Corrs that people seem to have problems with it. I can imagine the crashless nukes (Crashless nuke on an OS, with a DA or 2 out, yes please) and other blast set changes might make TA shine a little faster. But, the only thing I can see changing to make TA better in and of itself, is buffing early powers, that pretty much means nerfing later powers to stop it from being OP at 50, which isn't a trade off I want. I have no problem with late blooming power sets, especially not since the XP smoothing have made the leveling process a lot faster/easier. I consider it worth the wait. If they don't nerf it at the same time the buff it, I can easily imagine it getting a nerfing soon after, which is just silly, and frankly, will be a PITA to potentially have to rework a TAs build twice in quick succession. Best leave it alone, and accept that some sets mature faster than others, IMHO.

It's not about appeal, though; it's about performance. I don't like Radiation Emission, but I would never wander in to a thread like this and suggest it should get a buff that makes it more appealing to me, because I know it doesn't need one. The issue isn't how well it works, because I know it works well; I just don't enjoy it.

Meanwhile, I love Trick Arrow, but it is noticeably weaker than other support sets at offering support. If someone comes along and says,"Trick Arrow is crap and is useless," I will probably be one of the first to show up and defend Trick Arrow's pros. But that doesn't mean I pretend it has no cons, and if someone asks me what gives Trick Arrow a bad rap, I have a long list to read off to them.

From a business standpoint, this game makes money from the players' desire to roll alts. The drive to make more characters is a major part of what will make a player on a free account give their money to NCSoft. Powersets that are outliers create a problem for that business model.

A powerset that underperforms is a powerset that won't entice someone to roll an alt with that set, which is potentionally lost revenue.

Likewise, a powerset that overperforms is a powerset that will make similarly categoried sets feel less like they're worth playing. Again, that leads to NCSoft losing potential money.

You know what would probably be really interesting? If the Devs gave us a way to rate every set in-game (that way more than just forumites would take part), the results of which updated dynamically and was visible at character creation. The Devs would get to see which sets are considered good by most players, and players would get some kind of way to judge the performance of a set before they played it (outside of the numbers, which plenty of people love to make clear that they don't care for >_>).

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I mostly agree with your main points. I just disagree that popularity is a perfect measure of performance. And I disagree that TA under-performs, except early in it's development (and, in truth, in the mid range, too), which it undeniably does. Especially as more and more of the game focus goes to end game, buffing sets because the bloom late make less and less sense.

I think a lot of the sets that 'under-perform' just suffer from reputation issues, and that buffing them to make the more appealing leads more people to play them, sure, but then makes the set more to the OP side, thus requiring so other set or sets to get a buff to keep in line with the average (performance and/or popularity).


And, the point of my quote that you quoted, was meant to illustrate my opinion that sets that some people say under-perform, if others think they work just fine, might be a result of play-style clashes between how the set works,and how some people try to play the set and or just plain preference. I see no reason to believe that as many people love such a lame set as traps except that somehow, I can't play it to it's best advantage. IE, I seem to suck at it, not that it is a bad set. Thus, my point, the set doesn't suck, I just don't make best use of it. I suspect that when I hear people complain about a set I farm with as being weak and underpowered, that perhaps, in that case, it might be them, and not the set.

By "later powers" I assume you mean Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow. I doubt you would ever have to worry about either one getting nerfed in order to better the performance of the earlier powers.

The earlier powers perform poorly because they have poor values. Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow perform well because they are well balanced. Believe me, if Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow were in need of nerfs, so would many similar powers.

For reference, Oil Slick Arrow at 50 only does about ~100 points more damage over 15 seconds than Rain of Arrows does in 1 second. All at 3 times the recharge of Rain of Arrows. And EMP Arrow takes a 60 seconds longer to recharge than Controller AoE Holds, all for about 7.5 seconds longer Hold, and it comes with a penalty for the caster.

Again, no need to worry.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I hope you'll forgive me, but I always worry when sets that seem fine and perfectly balanced, if late-blooming, get a once over...

If only people could be trusted. Sigh.
I am generally an optimist and I actually have a very strong belief in the inherent goodness in most people. But even I am doubtful of the rate of honesty you would get.

Besides, the devs can already see which sets people make, play, and keep playing.

The thing is I don't agree that Trick Arrow is "fine but late blooming". I agree that power-wise it is a back-ended set but I think that says something more about the quality of the early powers than the late powers.

Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow are both nice powers but they aren't inherently out of line for Tier 8 and 9 powers in a Buff/Debuff set. For example compare OSA and Emp Arrow to Fallout and EM Pulse in Radiation Emission. Obviously the powers aren't identical and OSA is obviously not as situational as Fallout (due to not requiring a corpse) but the basic power level is about the same. However the rest of Radiation Emission is quite a bit stronger than the rest of Trick Arrow. The debuffs provided by IR, EF and LR are quite a bit stronger than the combo of Flash, Glue, PGA and Disruption in everything except resistance debuff (and it's almost as much there).

Now Radiation Emission is one of the stronger Buff/Debuff sets and I don't expect TA to be bought up to it's level but I would like to see it bought up so that it's somewhat closer to the level of performance that Rad, Traps, Dark and Time enjoy.

I'll forgive you if you forgive me for disagreeing with you.

The fact that it is considered late-blooming at all should be indicative of some kind of balance problem. Oil Slick Arrow and EMP Arrow are crutches holding up 7 other limping powers*.

*Maybe 6, Poison Gas Arrow isn't so bad, anymore.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

If the devs don't take IO balance into account, then they're deliberately being bad at their jobs.

But there is a difference between taking it into account and using IO builds as the primary balance concern.