Rethinking power armor toggles

pantagruel01

The way power armor toggles work has been something of a balance problem since launch, because it's designed around energy balancing, and CO has a lot of methods of energy gain which all stack so you can't really balance based on energy. In the end, if a single toggle is a reasonably performing power, running 3 toggles at once for 4 times the energy consumption will be an unreasonable power, because the difference between a top damage power and a tier 0 starter power is only around 50%, so if your toggles do as much damage as a tier 0 starter power they're going to be doing twice the damage of any other power if you can run three of them.

Separately from this, there are NPCs who combine eye beams and punching, and in general the animations for shoulder and chest slot powers are generic enough that using them along with an out of set power usually won't look bad (animations for hand slot powers are extremely likely to clash with animations for other powers). Thus, if it can be done in a balanced way, it would be nice if the chest and shoulder slot powers could be made into general purpose toggles, rather than PA toggles.

I actually think it can be. Think of the various PA powers as if they were DoTs:

• Micro Munitions: completely unbuffed, it does 151 damage every 1s for 6s; total 1057 damage at an energy cost of 129 and an activation time of 0.67.
  
• Eye Beam: completely unbuffed, it does 100 damage every 0.5s for 5s; total 1100 damage at an energy cost of 126 and an activation time of 0.5.
  
• Minigun: completely unbuffed, it does 55 damage every 0.25s for 6s; total 1375 damage at an energy cost of 198 and an activation time of 0.5.
  
• Shoulder Launcher: completely unbuffed, it does 978 damage once with a 4s delay; total 978 damage at an energy cost of 83 and an activation time of 0.5.
  

Those numbers are completely out of line for a spammable attack power, or even one with a short CD (for example, dust devil, which is one of the better short cd DoTs, does 650 total damage for a cost of 50 energy and 0.83s activation), but compared to longer CD powers it's not entirely out of line; Rimefire Burst does 814 damage in 0.67s and 31 energy, and either applies debuffs or refreshes itself instantly.

In terms of theme, most fictional power armors do not continually blaze away with all their weapons. They may have an ability to fire many weapons at once, but it's rarely continuous fire. Overall, I would propose a fairly simple adjustment to all the chest and shoulder powers: reduce duration to 5s (cuts damage of MM to 906, minigun to 1155), and add a 30s cd. They are considered to be simple toggles rather than power armor toggles, and have no slot restrictions. Alternately, buff their base damage by 20% and turn them into simple maintains, with a 2p 'automated assault' advantage that makes them toggles with a cd.

Additional balancing (damage, energy, duration, cd) is likely needed, but I think modeling them as specialized DoTs is the right way to balance them.

pantagruel01

gradii said:

That's even worse than what the devs currently seem to have planned. It would be far better to get rid of the terrible toggle and "targeting arc" system entirely in favor of maintains and charge ups.

Regular toggles are way less flaky than PA toggles.

dakrushmor

gradii said:

The only "toggle" we have aside from PA toggles is advantaged sparkstorm.

There's also advantaged Ego Storm.

gradii said:

In terms of theme, most fictional power armors do not continually blaze away with all their weapons. They may have an ability to fire many weapons at once, but it's rarely continuous fire.

Exactly, that's why we're gonna get standalone (non-Slot) version of Tactical Missiles & Chest Beam. There should be more of them introduced, like standalone Concussor, Eye and especially Plasma Beams (it will be technically reintroduction of removed original PB). And it would be awesome if standalone Eye Beam will be convertable to third non-Slot toggle.

aiqa

I like the idea, but having the option of multiple "DoT" that synergize well and do something significant enough for you that you want them can easily cause it's own balance issues. If they get a shared cooldown I think this could work well.

pantagruel01

aiqa said:

I like the idea, but having the option of multiple "DoT" that synergize well and do something significant enough for you that you want them can easily cause it's own balance issues. If they get a shared cooldown I think this could work well.

Having them on a shared cooldown defeats the purpose, as it means you can't do a fire all weapons effect (side point: fire all weapons, as an ultimate, should really just fire all the weapons you have, not cause you to suddenly have new weapons -- except doing that would require really stupid character design).

A high damage click power with a cooldown is a known factor for balancing, it's not unique like the way PA toggles currently are.

aesica

People may not agree with me, but they really should just get turned into standard maintains. It'd be easier for the developers to balance properly, it's easier for us to mix with other powersets if it fits our theme, and I'm pretty sure it would make the power rotations feel far less awkward. It also eliminates the firing arc issue that (I think) makes PA such an unpleasant framework to play with.

I really can't think of a time when someone like Iron Man just sat there, faced his opponent, and fired lasers and missiles out of every orifice continuously for several minutes on end. It's always a combination of different attacks, one after the other, just like everyone else.

vonqball

I think this idea could work, but if you can run too many simultaneous toggles, then you haven't really solved the damage of having multiple attacks going off at once.

My preference would be to make most PA attacks maintains. Maintains that deal good damage, but that have cooldowns. So, they could be nice for other builds that want a bit of burst(ish) damage. Or, you can get multiple PA attacks and cycle them if you want to go full Starky Stark. This provides some baked in synergy with Int (for the cdr), which makes sense from a thematic perspective.

Then give some fun advantages... like full-charging Power Guantlet reduces the cooldowns on PA powers by X seconds.

aesica

^ You wouldn't even need to give all of the PA abilities cooldowns. Consider this setup with 3 power armor abilities as individual maintains:

Eye Beam: Lowest damage, but maintaining it fully applies Burn Through.
Chest Beam: Highest damage, but it has a ~10 sec cooldown.
Concussor Beam: Standard maintain damage. This would be used as filler.

pantagruel01

aesica said:

^ You wouldn't even need to give all of the PA abilities cooldowns.

You would unless their damage were drastically reduced.

aesica

pantagruel01 said:

aesica said:

^ You wouldn't even need to give all of the PA abilities cooldowns.

You would unless their damage were drastically reduced.

Why would their damage need to be reduced?

All giving them cooldowns would mean is that your rotation would be forced. Using the powers from my previous example, first you'd use Eye Beam, followed by Chest Laser, followed by Concussor Beam, and then back to Eye Beam in a very forced, mechanical way. You'd have no choice but to use one because the other 2 were still cooling down. Instead, giving them synergizing mechanics makes the rotation feel less forced, and even allows for similar synergy in cross-power builds. Maybe in the future, some power in another framework also gets the ability to apply Burn Through.

Or wait, did I miss something? When I meant maintains, I mean "no longer all used together" but rather, "used independently like other powers in other powersets." If anything, the damage would need to be brought up to match powers from other frameworks.

pantagruel01

aesica said:

pantagruel01 said:

aesica said:

^ You wouldn't even need to give all of the PA abilities cooldowns.

You would unless their damage were drastically reduced.

Why would their damage need to be reduced?

Because an unlimited toggle is just a flat dps add, and you can't have a flat dps add that's anywhere near as strong as any of the current toggles. Now, if they were regular maintains rather than toggles, sure, they'd need to be made stronger.

morigosa

You know... I'd be pretty happy with this, actually. Leave the firing all weapons bit for, y'know, the power named Fire All Weapons.

...Of course, it'd need a change to Overdrive to make it actually viable for energy returns when you're not stacking toggles. And I'd miss the Automated Assault advantage on Wrist Bolter; my current PA uses that along with Kickback from End primary to cover for the fact that Overdrive just doesn't give her anywhere near enough energy yet. Still in favor, though, as that PA character would need a drastic rebuild anyway just from the changes we know are coming.

vonqball

aesica said:

^ You wouldn't even need to give all of the PA abilities cooldowns.

You're right, of course. It is just an idea to make the set a little different, and to give players a reason to take multiple attacks instead of setup powers to buff one or two spammable attacks.

Or you could have the maintains apply nice debuffs when fully maintained... that could work too.

pantagruel01

There's an argument for a simple version of power armor:

Rescale the existing powers as individual maintains -- no toggles.
Implement two new 'Fire All Weapons' variants: 'Blizzard of Missiles' and 'Combined Beam' (names are placeholders). Blizzard of Missiles fires off rockets from everywhere (nothing wrong with rockets coming from the feet), ending with a final giga-missile, using existing animations for Dual Barrage, Micro Missiles, and Shoulder Launcher (its damage is probably only coincidentally related to those powers, however). Combined Beam instead uses Concussor Beam, Chest Laser, and Eye Beams. Blizzard of Missiles should probably be an area radius around target, while Combined Beam would be a cylinder.

vonqball

^I could get behind this idea. Multiple weapons firing off at once doesn't excite me that much tbh (and we do already have Fire All Weapons). However, some folks like the multi-fire aspect of PA, and these powers would let them keep that theme intact.

mithrosnomore

aesica said:

People may not agree with me, but they really should just get turned into standard maintains. It'd be easier for the developers to balance properly, it's easier for us to mix with other powersets if it fits our theme, and I'm pretty sure it would make the power rotations feel far less awkward. It also eliminates the firing arc issue that (I think) makes PA such an unpleasant framework to play with.

I really can't think of a time when someone like Iron Man just sat there, faced his opponent, and fired lasers and missiles out of every orifice continuously for several minutes on end. It's always a combination of different attacks, one after the other, just like everyone else.

I would have zero problem with this.

I would prefer this to the current effort.
No matter what they do to "balance" PA, unless they make the powers fully compatible with other sets and allow PA to splash other sets without gimping themselves, it will always be an "all or nothing" sort of thing.

Make power gauntlet a worthwhile stand alone power.
Make eye beams a worthwhile stand alone power.
Make everything in the set a worthwhile stand alone power.

But as long as they can be used at the same time as other powers in the set, doing this would make them overpowered.

pantagruel01

Considering another way that this could be done: turn power armor into a standard set. On the minus side, that renders it somewhat generic, but on the plus side, it's a lot easier to balance. The basics of the set would be:

Tier 0 blast: Power Gauntlet/Tactical Missiles.
Tier 1 maintain: Concussor Beams/Dual Barrage. Ranged damage, chance to apply the automated assault buff. Effects of automated assault TBD, possibly cost reduction, recharge speed, or charge speed.
Tier 1 cylinder: Eye Beams/Mini Gun. Cylinder damage, debuff applier.
Tier 2 area: Plasma Beam/Micro Missiles. Area should be large enough to make this viable for trash clearing, which probably means a 5' diameter or so for plasma beam and a 20' radius for micro missiles. Should probably also stack automated assault.
Tier 3 rupture: Hand Cannon/Shoulder Launcher. Consumes automated assault for an extra effect (this is more like TK than single blade)
Ultimate: Combined Beam/Blizzard of Missiles. Combines the graphics of the four powers of the same type.

Not sure what role the tier 0 blasts are supposed to have, but they're lacking in role right now so that's not a change. Also not sure what chest beam should be, there's a temptation to have it be a plasma burn detonate (and add some plasma burn appliers -- plasma beam already has one).