What will be the next go-to AO?

ericrightshow82

Just about every one of my characters as of now has Ego Surge. Since that's soon to be nerfed into oblivion, what's the popular consensus on a replacement?

rtma

Whatever works, I mostly go with complimenting theme, Lock'nLoaded for Tech, Ice Sheath for Ice, Immolation for Fire etc.

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avianos

Is this so important? welp seems it is because people want to mixmax

Imbue, Lock & Load, Ice Sheath are the AO i use a lot personally

then comes Aggressor and Intensity
because you know, I like variety

However I NEVER use Immolation, Electric Sheath, Shadow Shroud because screw those ugly visual auras

EDIT: Oh yeah, Ascension exist as well I guess​​

roughbearmattach

As others said, Imbue, Lock'n Load, and Ice Sheath will all be popular, because many DPS min/maxers focus on getting crits. That seems good to me, especially since these three AOs work in slightly different ways, and have different advantages.

The change to Ego Surge will spur folks to consider other AOs, and consider their builds again. That can be a good thing.

On the other hand, I have a dozen toons or so with Ego Surge, and I am not looking forward to rebuilding them all. On the other other hand, none of these toons are what I consider "mains", so rebuilding is more of an annoyance than a real problem.

avianos

roughbearmattach wrote: »

On the other hand, I have a dozen toons or so with Ego Surge, and I am not looking forward to rebuilding them all. On the other other hand, none of these toons are what I consider "mains", so rebuilding is more of an annoyance than a real problem.

EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE. Good thing I only have 6-7 characters with Ego Surge and I didn't got greedy with exploiting the OP AO which was bound to be nerfed into the ground and really... it deserve it

Seriously you have nobody else to blame but yourself, you ever said that ego surge is so OP that you even have healers using it because... why not?

I mean, come on now, it was waving red flag that this AO would be nerfed

Theme and Variety FTW ​​

chaosdrgnz43

Depends on your build. Personally, I'd pick Aggressor because of enrage stacks. But if the aim is more damage, I'd pick Imbue or Ice Sheath.

DEX builds would probably get the most out of those two.

beezeeze

Maybe use AOs based on theme or something? That was the problem with ego surge..everyone had to have it, it was over preforming by so much that melee builds, tanks, everyone used it. That ends up limiting options, now you've got to make a choice.

roughbearmattach

I am not really complaining--I fully expected Ego Surge to be changed a year ago, too. Annoyance yeah, but no biggie. Most of my toons are only played for farming purposes.

flowcyto

At this point I'd prob value a team-based Ult w/ an enemy dmg resist debuff over a personal AO- at least, as far as offering more overall utility to anything but solo play.

aesica

beezeeze wrote: »

Maybe use AOs based on theme or something?

I don't know, the way I see it, the only powers which really matter for theme are the ones you can see. Throwing lasers, breathing fire, wielding swords--those are all theme-defining. The only AOs which should count are those that contribute to the character aesthetics somehow, such as bursting into flames or crackling with electricity.

Since everyone's always clamoring for more crap with minimal or no visual effects (including AOs) then they pretty much fall into the "crap under the hood that just makes the character work" category. Things like energy unlocks, forms, and AOs without visual effects are better off being minmaxed or optimized for smoother gameplay because they lend nothing to the character's outward appearance and how people perceive it.​​

avianos

aesica wrote: »

beezeeze wrote: »

Maybe use AOs based on theme or something?

I don't know, the way I see it, the only powers which really matter for theme are the ones you can see. Throwing lasers, breathing fire, wielding swords--those are all theme-defining. The only AOs which should count are those that contribute to the character aesthetics somehow, such as bursting into flames or crackling with electricity.

Since everyone's always clamoring for more crap with minimal or no visual effects (including AOs) then they pretty much fall into the "crap under the hood that just makes the character work" category. Things like energy unlocks, forms, and AOs without visual effects are better off being minmaxed or optimized for smoother gameplay because they lend nothing to the character's outward appearance and how people perceive it.

I believe Immolation, Electric Sheath and Shadow Shroud need to
1. Get UTILITY ADVs, like seriously they need it
2. Get Buffed in general to have equal potential with the other AOs
2. Having their visuals take over tuned DOWN

Especially you Shadow Shroud, STOP REVERTING MY COSTUMES' COLOURS

In general I like Imbue the most now (Followed by Lock and Load)
no visual auras, theme-neutral, actually good crit buffs

You actually can build a high DPS even without an AO, i had been avoiding picking both AOs and ADs on new builds to get more powers for theme​​

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kallethen

I'm still keeping Ego Surge on the couple of toons I have it on, since they're TK users anyways.​​

avianos

pandoraslockbox wrote: »

Did they fix the bug where Imbue only granted 12 break free points instead of 1780 or whatever?

You are so late for the party...

kallethen wrote: »

I'm still keeping Ego Surge on the couple of toons I have it on, since they're TK users anyways.

Unless you rank it to 3, I won't reccomend the ADV because the critical chance per ego leech is really low​​

riverocean

rtma said:

Whatever works, I mostly go with complimenting theme, Lock'nLoaded for Tech, Ice Sheath for Ice, Immolation for Fire etc.

I usually go for them too. But then I figured.. hey Ego Surge is bound to get nerfed, and when it does that's a free forced retcon. I'm kind of a retcon-a-holic. Honestly, I'd do it frequently as possible if it wasn't so expensive.

I'm keeping Ego Surge on my ranged TK guy. It works well for TK so why rock the boat?

revanantmorituri

Fortunately, my go to is to look for solid, consistent damage boosts rather than depend on the RNG to give me crits, meaning I only have Ego Surge in a few places. Because depending on the RNG in this game is a losing proposition: just ask the Rampage players.

legendarylycan

riverocean wrote: »

But then I figured.. hey Ego Surge is bound to get nerfed, and when it does that's a free forced retcon.

it's actually not, since they only do forced retcons if powers are either removed or are moved to a different tier - which ego surge wasn't​​

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chaosdrgnz43

pandoraslockbox said:

Nah, they should still give us a free retcon... the power is too different now not to

I've learned not to hope too much at devs. Like as stated before, they'll probably just free up a power slot. Retcon is still plausible, but not likely.

avianos

With the current balances and statements about the future I'm losing my faith to the game more and more​​

aesica

pandoraslockbox wrote: »

Nah, they should still give us a free retcon... the power is too different now not to

The power itself may be different to the point it warrants replacing for most characters, however it's the type of power a player could just tack on to their build to make it stronger--no matter what their other power choices were. All people are really doing is swapping out one AO for another, so while a free retcon would sure be nice, I don't really see how it's necessary in this particular case.​​

pantagruel01

Unless the power's ID changes, it can't be removed from builds except by a retcon (a change to power IDs will cause some people to have a forced reset, depending where the power is in their build, and will cause it to disappear for everyone else).

roughbearmattach

Most of my toons took it because of the Con-crit scaling. Without that, it becomes a less-than-suboptimal choice on those toons. A retcon is very warranted.

friezaliveson

pandoraslockbox said:

Imbue ... Ice Sheath sucks



Figures Ego Surge would be nerfed. I'm complaining. :P Game companies always nerf things to cater to nooobz ...this reminds me of what happened to IDF... everyone was using it, so they hit a little checkbox that made it a form without changing anything else about it and now nobody uses it



Instead of amping up the other AOs to match Ego Surge or limiting crits to 50% they nerf Ego Surge 9_9



Did they fix the bug where Imbue only granted 12 break free points instead of 1780 or whatever?

Ego Surge is just pretty much rip but the normal toons won't be rip, however it'll take much more buffs from gear/mods, etc to get them as good as pre-nerfs.

Now, even though we have "game balance" we lost fun factor:
https://youtu.be/HShZfLlVp80?t=353 Case in point; CO is just going to lose more and more interest. Doesn't change the people who camp rencen because why would they want to do anything in this game? lmfao. Think about it; there has been complains about this game due to bugs and glitches and so many exploits that were never fixed or addressed even BEFORE I joined. After digging through the forums for a long time, I just figured nothing would matter-- no amount of game balance would make up for "fun".

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spinnytop

gradii said:

Imbue or Ice sheath until they notice people are using them, then they'll be nerfed too.​​

I think it's much more likely that any underperforming AOs will be buffed to that standard. Ego Surge was, let's be real here, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above either of those performance-wise, so claiming they would be nerfed for the same reason it was is just plain ol' silly.

The "go to" AO will actually be several AOs now... which means we're approaching how the situation should be, a bunch of choices rather than just one.

chaosdrgnz43

spinnytop said:

The "go to" AO will actually be several AOs now... which means we're approaching how the situation should be, a bunch of choices rather than just one.

Sooooo, you're telling us that devs will see which AOs will be popular so they can "tweak" it?

I'd like devs to tinker with underperforming AOs like Electric Sheathe or Immolation. Or maybe they just like to tend to the popular ones.

spinnytop

chaosdrgnz43 said:

spinnytop said:

The "go to" AO will actually be several AOs now... which means we're approaching how the situation should be, a bunch of choices rather than just one.

Sooooo, you're telling us that devs will see which AOs will be popular so they can "tweak" it?

I'd like devs to tinker with underperforming AOs like Electric Sheathe or Immolation. Or maybe they just like to tend to the popular ones.

I refer you to the first half of the comment you quoted only the second half of:

spinnytop said:

I think it's much more likely that any underperforming AOs will be buffed to that standard. Ego Surge was, let's be real here, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above either of those performance-wise, so claiming they would be nerfed for the same reason it was is just plain ol' silly.