No. Your stats are below normal. Just like I said they are.
Repeating it doesn't make it true. But you're welcome to believe whatever fantasy makes you happy. Anything above 30% from superstats is considered optimal. And I meet that. Just because you're anal retentive about having 34% doesn't mean the rest of us at 30% are below normal.
And no, I wasn't concerned about you, just the fact that it screws up your testing methodology in exactly the way I said it did. You got lower results because you used smaller numbers.
Which it didn't, cause your numbers came out exactly the same. Epic fail.
Archery and munitions are both critical-required powersets because they were designed to do less damage in their attacks without them, and because their energy passives are tied to criticals. They are also both underperforming versus other ranged sets, but that's a fight for another day. So they really don't need to be getting nerfed at all.
Since math has already shown it's a damage nerf of less than 2% in most cases, I don't share your concern. Actually, in one of your cases you will be doing almost 3% MORE damage. Go figure.
The stat changes are a DEX nerf. This means they are a nerf to any toon that tries to use DEX without EGO...like archery or munitions or MA toons running quarry. It's even worse for MA tanks running combos like DEX/CON who already are giving up some damage for surviability. Now they'll get to give up even more damage and energy return (tempest stacks are on critical which provides energy) and in return they get nothing.
If you're running Quarry and SSing INT (which you should be doing if you're using Quarry) the boost to EGO is going to make up for the loss of crits from DEX. The numbers have already shown that. The only exception would be someone who has a ridiculous amount of DEX and virtually no EGO. So yes, they will need to adjust. Sometime change hurts, and outlier cases will sometimes get hammered. Such is life.
The numbers simply don't support your hysterical rant. And I suspect the devs already know this.
Before the stat change, EGO was not worth taking by itself. After the change, DEX and EGO become not worth taking by themselves. To me, that's worse.
It seems that was the whole point of the change. So I guess mission accomplished. Y'know, kinda like how superstat scaling was changed to an average of both stats, not just the one that was highest, which forced all those poor souls who had 400 of one stat and 100 of the other to <gasp!> rebalance their stats. And life goes on.
So, new Mental Discipline toggle... Imo +crit chance on proc should be remade to just +damage buff, since even +10% pure damage(Any aspect for example) is always better than 10% extra crit chance. Also +crit chance severly limits this toggle's usefulness for any build that doesn't have dex+ego ss
The difference for you is minuscule. On live you're doing 14.95% more damage from crits. On PTS you're doing 14.08% -- a difference of 0.87%. That 5% loss in crits looks really huge, but statistically the extra severity makes up for it.
Okay, fine, bring math into this thread and prove me wrong. :P
That said - yes, it does look like a lot. What's the formula anyhow to determine the average damage bonus due to crits?
-Mental Discipline, assuming it will count as a Form/Aspect and therefore is mutually exclusive with the others, really REALLY should buff both Ranged and Melee Ego damage. This way it should provide more use for the TK set as a whole, as well as Telepathy, and therefore a Freeformer might actually choose it EVER over Form of the Tempest.
-Strength was not a stat that needed nerfing at all, and that's what this change has done. IMO leave Str alone as the Knock strength/resistance stat, and have Ego as the mez strength/resistance stat.
-The Dex/Ego stat changes don't really achieve anything except to nerf Dex as a standalone stat and to tie Dex and Ego even closer together than before. Under these changes, Ego will still suck as a standalone stat.
-Rec still needs something more than that to be a useful Superstat. So does End, actually.
So if you are not statting BOTH dex and ego, you can pretty much kiss your crit chance goodbye. I'll classify that as a major nerf to any Dex/Int toons I have since it will not only affect DPS, but if any of them rely on crits for energy return, like with Killer Instinct or the dual blades form, there goes the energy return. Several of my characters are going to be wondering why their rear ends hurt after these changes go live.
So if you are not statting BOTH dex and ego, you can pretty much kiss your crit chance goodbye. I'll classify that as a major nerf to any Dex/Int toons I have since it will not only affect DPS, but if any of them rely on crits for energy return, like with Killer Instinct or the dual blades form, there goes the energy return. Several of my characters are going to be wondering why their rear ends hurt after these changes go live.
Not really accurate unless you have absolutely no EGO to speak of. See above.
I hate to interrupt the argument about the stat changes but...
Ahem.
Telekinetic Assault is having the exact same animation issue as Crushing Wave does on live: Which is to say it doesn't animate 90% of the time. You hold your hands out, the target takes damage, but the knives don't fly most of the time. I had to use the power several times before I ever even saw the animation before that I thought it was just a really invisible looking attack.
Crit rates are low enough as is on live... here's a proposal... have crit rate dependent on Dex and/or Ego. By that I mean have crit rate increase to the soft cap at a total of 200 Dex+Ego at level 40 with majorly diminishing returns after that so that it is not absolutely necessary to superstat both to get a decent crit rate.
Or maybe a formula like this: (DEX + (EGO/2)) = 200 = softcap With this method SSing Dex alone can get the softcap and SSing Ego alone will give a bonus to crit without reaching the softcap and SSing both Dex and Ego will not result in an overpowering crit rate as long as the diminishing returns are diminishing enough.
Um... I dunno if it's just me or not, since no one else on this thread said anything about it, from what I've read, but Mental Discipline's 0-pt advantage isn't providing me with Id Blade animations.
I'm also very interested in feedback about the stat changes, though I'm sure we'll be getting feedback on that even without me mentioning it. We know that there will be some builds that may initially be worried - primarily builds that take Dex and don't take Ego, looking for procs based on crit, but not damage. Our testing so far indicates that even for these builds, this should largely be a buff for them, as the additional damage from Crit Severity more than makes up for the loss of Crit Chance, but we'll be watching.
It's also worth mentioning, if you are someone that has equal amounts of Dex and Ego, your crit chance/severity numbers should be unchanged. I mean exactly equal in this instance, if one is slightly higher than the other (which is pretty likely even when going for parity) you will see slight numbers changes. However, you will of course now have the other advantages Ego brings as well.
I'd really like to know what level and stat spread you're using to make the claim that this stat change is a buff for anyone that had Dex as a SS. The best case scenario seems to be a SS Dex/Ego character and that's only to stay the same, everyone else is getting a nerf.
OK I've finally looked at the numbers for Crit based on Dex / Ego. I'm not liking them at all. Thre is not to Crits than just extra damage. Thre are procs which are based on the CHANCE to Crit. What you are doing is forcing builds based on Crits into super stat DEX / EGO builds.
With Dex in the 200 range I'm loosing 8% of my chance to Crit. SS Ego is the only thing which will get me enough extra +% chance to Crit to get my near my current live server levels. To reach my old level of chance to Crit I'm going to have to focus even more of gearing up my Ego. I don't want to do that was I also value other stats like.
The DEX changes affects my Super Stat DEX (non SS EGO) buillds greatly. You've greatly dimished the damage and energy generation on several of my characters. It will take my longer to generate stacks of Foxcus. And less non-energy building energy generation.
AllI got to ask is "WHY?" Why complicate things by mixing DEX/EGO interactions in regards to Crits. IT just baffles me.
I will say that I was hoping Ego would have it's own stand alone goodies not tied to crit chance.
I think psychics who want to survive in this game will likely have a self heal and it's a good idea to have PRE for such. PRE/EGO is gonna let you heal and have hold resistence, but you're not going to do anything better than a DEX/EGO build.
basically I feel like you've re-married these stats when they've been begging for divorce.
Not to mention that you've completely ignored the first part of that equasion.. hold severity.In fact you seem to be avoiding holds in general. Let me explain.
Root/Snare - completely unchanged. No way to mitigate, but luckily you can still use powers.
Paralyze/maintained paralyze - You know we hate the current implementation. You gave us resistance.. and us who depend on holds have no counter.
Telekinetic Lance rank 3 is Defile. It sounds the same. It even looks the same, only pink.
Telekinesis has a description flub in that it does Telethrow 4.7, Telethrow 4.9 or something along those lines when examining the contribution in the 'purchase ranks and advantages' window.
Ego Reverberation's information when purchasing is copy/pasted from Spirit Reverberation, including it mentioning it feeds off of fear.
A couple observations/concerns then:
Does Strength provide no additional Breakfree damage/benefit of any kind now, even when you mash the action button? I sincerely hope that is NOT the case, if for no other reason than doing so would leave it solely with the roulette that is Knock.
Given now that Telekinesis seems to be far more useful now, are there any plans on going back through existing maps and providing more objects for this variant of the Pick Up & Throw mechanic to work with? In Aftershock, for example, there are piles of stonebrick in certain areas.. just mounds.. that you cannot manipulate in any way.. and it's not limited to Aftershock. Demonflame, Resistance, and to a lesser extent, Serpent Lantern are ALL guilty of this.
Mark my words.. there'll be a time when you have perfectly good blocks in a room in Demonflame you'd think you could use and when you tap Telekinesis, you'll attack someone with a book. A book that does maybe 400 damage when hurled by someone with 300+ strength.
If you're concerned about screens filling up with 'Press Z to Pick Up X', then you can either make the weighty so it limits just who can lift it or you can do what I hope you will eventually do is apply a round of polish to the entire Pick Up & Throw mechanic.
Telekinetic Reverberation/Psi Lash seem to be left out in the cold given the new thing is to be Ego Leechy. Are there plans to make it benefit from Ego Leech, convert the existing damage buff over to the Ego Leech system, or add stacks?
Telekinetic Maelstrom: Will it become more awesome?
Um... I dunno if it's just me or not, since no one else on this thread said anything about it, from what I've read, but Mental Discipline's 0-pt advantage isn't providing me with Id Blade animations.
I was just saying exactly this an hour ago while playing. Got the 0 point advantage yet I see no dual ego blades. Hmm...
Also while we're at it can we can some sort of animation running to remind the player that mental discipline is running? Just something.
DEX changes will break the game hundreds of chars will be a mere shadow of what they used to be if this is added to Live.
MA characters and Dodge Brick characters can kiss their awesomeness goodbye. Since their chance to crit is reduced by 1/3rd hence weakening those that equip Form of The Tempest.
We will be forced to take ego reducing the benefits we could've had from other stats. Result ? A giant rise in AoPM users.
Besides that the ranged powers are a bit odd.
TK Assault is like a slightly weaker Lightning Arc.
TK Burst has a nice area of effect but damage is poor and TK Lance even when fired with 5 stacks of Ego Leech is weaker than a full maintain of TK Assault, which shouldn't be the case for a T3 skill.
Doesn't defences on Ego Form need some tweaking? I've been told it's really squishy compared to Seraphim or Shadowform, which both supposedly have just about the same damage increase?
TK changes: Tk power:
This is great to use, but i'm concerned about map where there is nothing to send flying.
Could we get it work like if there is nothing we just rip a piece of the floor and send it at the target face
Size could be determined by rank and ego stat.
Also I think it should be easier to lift object perhaps not as easy as strength but still better than now.
TK shield
Well there is no change in this power so it will just be a suggestion.
Could we have a "laser knight type" advantage on this power.
Right now the only shield power with this type of advantage have a strong technology look.
I think that TK powerset is actually a good fit to have it, as it's a range/melee powerset and a LaserKnight+lingering effect would be very nice to have.
TK Lance
I will not comment on damage yet as i was very sad to see that animation,graphic and sound is just defile
TK Assault
why is there bit of thing flying everywhere?
Otherwise I like it a lot.
Mental Discipline
Shoud buff range damage as well.
Stats changes: REC changes:
It's nice but if it could gain a bit more like increasing automatic energy recovery
Ego changes:
very nice since it's clearly helping my force user who never had any strengh but instead REC/END with ego and presence heavily geared.
DEX changes:
One concern I have is for my archery character.
I have hunter's instinct as energy unlock and as archery are not quick attack like munition I find kind of hard to gain energy.
To compensate for the small loss in crit change could we have in return more energy returned with this power?
Stats proposition: END:
Could it have something like slowing energy decay, it would be a nice addition for toons with high END and low REC.
Well, some of this is pretty straightforward, and some of it either relates to more abstract and long considered thoughts behind the straightforward suggestions or is more wishful thinking of more significant changes that seem likely to require specific coding work , so for specific and concise suggestions or potentially more manageable parts of the wishful thinking parts, skip to the brighter bits of text:
I think EGO based Knock back for ranged attacks makes better sense in some cases, like Force Detonation, but I don't think a universal change to the stat is the best way to introduce it:
My original thought was along the lines of some Ranged powers seem to be "Kinetically Linked" to the char, where they exert a force that intuitively the character is "Braced" against to push against a target (like Concussor Beams), and other powers seemed to Spontaneously manifest at the target point away from the player's body (like Force Detonation).
One of my thoughts was that was that some powers could have a "tag" that related to this connection or a lack of it, and that EGO based Knock made sense for one set, and STR for another. This tag could prevent trying to juggle confusion between "melee" and "ranged" for something like Earth Splitter Knock being affected by STR or not, for example.
It also seemed to me that a concept I've often thought could be a useful game mechanic foundation for the Open Framework, "Stat Transformation", could be a way to bridge the gap between what powers look like or what theme they fit, and the functional role they fit in overall game mechanics and framework placement.
Originally, this tied into my ideas for "Thematic Structuring", which is conceptually both a framework to earn the ability to perform such game mechanic modifications by investing thematically by powers, advantage points, stats and whatever else tied into the system, and also a framework to educate and direct the player in how to work towards thematic and functional goals (as the above "tag" suggestion could do for some powers).
More simply, and relating to the the actual state of the game at the moment, a Toggle, Advantage for a Toggle (currently, Mental Discipline seems a fitting place for an Advantage choice), or an "Innate" type Power (currently only Energy Unlocks), could be the vehicle for resolving this game mechanic and thematic issue.
I think things would work better along the lines of an EGO/STR having a combo effect for Knock back (and maybe Resistance effect...both Hold and Knock), and then some specific Power or Advantage choices in frameworks tip things one way or the other, for the reasons along the lines of the above.
I think this EGO/DEX Crit change is bad as standard behavior...I think, again, along the lines of the "Stat Transformation" discussion above, that this type of change in game mechanics need to be tied to something specific so the player makes a decision, like "Mental Discipline" (w/o Advantage required). This seems like should resolve issues related to confusion as to why EGO is arbitrarily increasing critical hit chance ("Mental Discipline" is a well chosen name in many regards), resolve the game mechanic issues some have brought up, and empower the player to have a choice which resonates more because of the impact and that it makes sense.
It is too bad something along the lines of prior suggestions for holding/throwing environmental objects couldn't be done that were related to thematically improving the basic "pick up and throw" object mechanics by picking a power to thematically enhance its look and also enhance functionality:
One idea was where you could have an object picked up and held or floating around you before throwing it, which seems like it could provide an impressive thematic visual and might conceptually offer a defensive tradeoff option (chance to intercept damage and be damaged/destroyed while it was floating). For the current implementation of Telekinesis, this seems like it could be a useful Advantage choice if it could be done...but, ya know, the Earth framework is coming up, isn't it?...maybe this type of significant tactical effect would be more beneficial to restrict to that if you could choose to have it held in your hand or floating around you so that it could fit both a Might or Mind theme...
One thing I had hoped for was for the Hurl power changing to be able to enhance the standard pick up and hold (as a specific function of related powers, like Block enhancers enhance and "themify" Block/Shields), and one thing I thought that could work with that power that could also work with the Telekinesis change was the ability to charge and tear up a piece of the ground to throw if no object was near by...i.e., a tradeoff of speed of use for enhancing the power or, in this case, letting it work where it did not before. Given that Hurl already does tear up the ground, this seems like directly applicable to the current situation with Telekinesis if, again, it can actually be implemented.
Futher to my original post, I'd like to suggest the following:
Buff the crit figures on dex and critical severity on ego so that this doesn't work out a nerf for players who just take one of these stats. Many people take both if they take one, but not everyone does and sometimes it's more important for them to crit often than to crit high, especially with dex. If the end result is a slight buff to both dex and ego, sobeit. Everyone will get the same buff so everyone's a winner.
Buff recovery more. It's still a lacklustre superstat.
Buff Ego Form. It needs some defensive abilities. I suggest some kind of damage reduction or damage absorption. Alternatively, give some dodge/avoidance.
Undo the change to Strength. In fact, go back to the original hold system. Strength should provide resistance to physical holds/knockback/knockup and ego should provide resistance to intangible holds/knockback/knockup. This system worked FINE.
For the Telekenesis power, if no object is found to throw, make the power create an average sized object from the user's mind and throw this at the enemy.
Bug Report:
Mind Link doesn't like the new TK powers and doesn't treat them as Mentalist for purposes of unlocking.
In other news, yes I did attempt to put Mind Link in my build and no my brain is not bugged.
Suggestion:
Make Mental Discipline all Ego damage not just melee Ego.
Put 3 (maybe 4) point adv on TK (the power) called Hammerspace which creates an object from the largest size catagory you can throw. Ala being able to lift size 4 stuff with this power and advantage would mean instead of throwing whats near by you create a random size 4 object and throw that.
When disassembling at the crafting table, I will occasionally be stopped with a "You do not have enough inventory space to complete this experiment" error even though I do, in fact, have more than enough space. It seems random as to what items cannot be disassembled at any one time--I'm stopped at breaking down one item, then a minute later I can break it down just fine.
Giving feedback about making pure range TK.
I still think there is a need for 1 more power especially AoE T2 maintain something like a rain of sword.
There is pretty solid Single target power but somehow the lack of defense for passive + the lack of solid AoE make it difficult for levelling.
A couple of issues from playtesting for about an hour:
* Creating a new character and skipping tutorial makes you end up as level 1 in MC.
* The game seems to think that my "inventory is full", so I cannot hand in any missions with gear rewards. I can pick up drops fine.
* After leveling up to 18, I cannot take TK Lance, despite it's requirements being "5 powers from Telekinesis" and me having TK Burst, TK Assault, TK, Ego Form, Ego Reverberation - all of which are tagged as Telekinesis. I COULD take it when I had Ego Blade instead of TK Burst, so maybe TK Burst isn't correctly tagged?
* TK Assault has the same issue as Force's Crushing Wave; sometimes the animation doesn't play.
And an observation:
I LOVE the redone Telekinesis power. It's exactly what I wanted, thanks devs! One keypress to pick up and throw stuff is GREAT!
Stat-Changes :
I just looked at my Munitions Char with 236 Dex and 106 Ego
On PTS she has now only 25,7 crit chance and 60,6 severity
On live its 30,3 chance and 54,5 severity
Loosing nearly 5% crit chance is not really nice .. the more severity doesn't even that
On further testing, I seriously dislike the new ranged TK powers.
TK Assault- its just a weaker version of Lightning Arc, damage might be similar but, it doesn't work well with Ego Leech enough to be sustained, its not worth it without the advantage.
TK Burst- the skill is decent for a tier 1 skill but for the only ranged AoE it still lacks some OOMPF.
TK Lance- Disappointing skill, specially if its a full range TK build.
---Firstly fix the animation, make it either like a beam fired from whichever part of the body, or during the charge a big lance is created and then fired, maybe with a nice explosive SFX.
---Next the damage, if this is going to be a skill that consumes all your Ego Leech and be the main T3 ranged power, it needs to have damage to compare to EBB in exchange for longer charge up time. Or it should keep the same amount of damage for higher tap damage and maybe a decent multiple of that for charged, but it leaves the Ego Leech intact, the stacks just scale the damage.
TK changes-
Ego Blade Anhialation- is too weak compared to EBB if its going to consume all the Ego Leech stacks, you can just hit harder and better with EBB taps.
TK Eruption- The skill is now just useful for the buff from it, maybe improve the damage slightly.
TK Maelstrom- This skill is actually pretty handy now but not for the low damage it provides but for the tap action, just one tap and instant Ego Leech. So either make it a chance to gain Ego Leech and some Higher damage for fully charged.
----An advantage for it to maintain as some whirling rocks around you wouldn't be bad, adding defense for sometime, and slight damage reflection for enemies attacking at melee range.
Stat changes-
I shall not comment on STR.
DEX: Are you kidding me ? The change will kill hundreds of builds out there. Combos of DEX/STR, DEX/INT will be majorly nerfed. People will have to waste room for gear that could have gone else where on EGO, just to balance the loss in Crit chance. Lock N Load will be a compulsory addition which will make ranged characters sad since Two Smoking Barrels won't work.
EGO: Changes are decent but the attempt to balance it with DEX is pointless. Drop the increase in Crit chance and just make it boost Severity and slight increase in damage. For balancing issues perhaps a small bonus to Dodge Chance or Damage absorption when paired with Ego Form ?
Repeating it doesn't make it true. But you're welcome to believe whatever fantasy makes you happy. Anything above 30% from superstats is considered optimal. And I meet that. Just because you're anal retentive about having 34% doesn't mean the rest of us at 30% are below normal.
30% is not optimal. The soft cap kicks in at 32%. My level 27 toon hits that softcap with 148. Your level 31 has 149 which means you are below the softcap, and hence, below optimal.
Which it didn't, cause your numbers came out exactly the same. Epic fail
Since math has already shown it's a damage nerf of less than 2% in most cases, I don't share your concern. Actually, in one of your cases you will be doing almost 3% MORE damage. Go figure.
No. My numbers showed a noticeable drop in crit chance on the quarry toon. And as I pointed out, that's a double hit for a toon that is now going to do less damage from fewer criticals, and less damage from having less energy return.
But looking at DEX/EGO and DEX/INT Quarry is looking at the best possible cases for the DEX nerf since they still both end up with decent levels of EGO fairly easily. Looking at my MA Tank:
Live:
DEX 259
CON 315
EGO 81
crit % 32.6
sev % 47.1
PTS:
crit %26.7
sev %56.6
The dex nerf means that instead of proc'ing tempest and getting energy on about 1/3 of hits, he's down to about 1/4 of hits. That in turn lowers his DPS because the energy return on focus for this toon is 36 when it procs.
It also takes this toon longer now to get to 8 stacks of focus which makes for a 3rd hit on the DPS.
If this stat change goes live, there will be DEX/EGO and DEX/INT quarry. Most everyone else will eventually realize that using half of a tied pair of stats is gimping their character.
If you're running Quarry and SSing INT (which you should be doing if you're using Quarry) the boost to EGO is going to make up for the loss of crits from DEX. The numbers have already shown that. The only exception would be someone who has a ridiculous amount of DEX and virtually no EGO. So yes, they will need to adjust. Sometime change hurts, and outlier cases will sometimes get hammered. Such is life.
The numbers simply don't support your hysterical rant. And I suspect the devs already know this.
I keep giving you numbers that show a noticeable effect from not tying DEX to EGO. Just because you want to call it negligible doesn't make the effect go away.
<i>on tying DEX/EGO togeher</i> It seems that was the whole point of the change. So I guess mission accomplished. Y'know, kinda like how superstat scaling was changed to an average of both stats, not just the one that was highest, which forced all those poor souls who had 400 of one stat and 100 of the other to <gasp!> rebalance their stats. And life goes on.
Tying two stats together means less variety. It gets us farther from the "be the hero you want to be" slogan. So while I have no doubt that you're right that the point was to tie the two of them together, my argument is that such a decision is a poor one.
I believe every stat should be useful in and of itself. I shouldn't have to take EGO if I want DEX any more than I should have to take DEX if I want EGO. I mean, if I want CON, I don't have to take STR. If I want INT, I don't have to take PRE. Why should these two stats now be stuck as requirements for the other?
Oh, and the 400-100 thing...
If someone has 400 CON and 100 STR, they average 250.
If someone else has 300 CON and 200 STR, they average 250.
If a third someone has 250 CON and 250 STR, they average 250.
So ya, why did they need to rebalance their stats?
What the passive change did was freed slotted passives from being tied to specific superstats (with one exception). It INCREASED the variety of toons in the game. This in turn helped with that whole "be the hero you want to be" thing.
p.s. That one exception is Defiance which not only isn't itself tied to superstats, it also (obviously) doesn't average superstats. All it does it gives the Defiant buff. Defiant is CON only. So the passive change had no noticeable effect on a 400 CON Defiance toon because it had no effect on any Defiance toon.
As the previous poster mentionned, the chance to Ego to make it more appealing will have a negative impact on most crit based characters.
With my dex/int AOPM characters
PTS
dex : 323 crit chance : 32.4
ego : 103 crit sev : 63.7
Live
PTS
dex : 346 crit chance : 39
ego : 119 crit sev : 57.3
I'll lose 7% crit chance for a gain of 7% in severity. I hope the numbers will be reworked a little before this is pushed to live.
On the other hand, maybe forgetting ego altogether and focusing on dex + energy management stat will proove easier for most builds.
My other comments :
The lightning arc ego clone sound nice, a bit less damage for less energy cost. Plus the advantage to make it AoE will make it interesting.
For the Ego toggle, once again why only melee damage buff. It would have been interesting to have a new way to increase ranged damage since TK is a mixed set. And all new powers added (beside this one) are ranged. This somewhat puzzle me.
The whole concept on managing ego leech and using it for energy management and burst damage is interesting. I'll have to test it later on.
I'm only focusing on ranged TK as that to me has been the biggest weakness of the set.
- None of the new powers are unlocking the higher tiers. This is a bad thing.
- TK Lance : Underwhelming. It's Defile in the TK set, but without any of the awesome. Consuming your buffs to deal more damage is not a good idea. A flat increase depending on how many Ego Leech stacks you have, that'd be better. This needs a new graphic, big time.
- Telekinetic Burst : In theory it's a good power. Seems a bit underpowered. For the love of Ceiling Cat, please stop tying in blade graphics to TK. Unless your character's name is Psylock, Syelok or Sighloc, it's not appropriate to a TK theme.
- Telekinetic Assault : Cool idea, horrible graphic. With orange tint, it looks like my TK character is frickin Jubilee, and NO ONE wants to be Jubilee. Someone earlier mentioned using the Telekinetic Darts for the assault, and that's slightly more appropriate. The rock bits flying around and such also seem wrong.
- Telekinetic Wave : This was always a great power and now it's even better. Love it.
- Telekinetic Maelstrom : Wow, I can actually fully charge it up now! The damage is still subpar, mostly because it's STILL not Ego damage. It needs a shot of steroids right into the BOOM gland. Great for building up Ego Leech stacks, but that should not be it's only use.
- Mental Discipline : Not good enough, it should increase ranged damage as well as melee. It's also massively, incredibly squishy. Perhaps a flat, smallish damage mitigation component ala IDF or Invulnerability (although no where near on that scale).
Despite my complaints, you guys are definitely on the right track, but you're a long way from being done.
EDIT! I also noted that almost none of these powers have the option to change origin location. That's a disservice to those who want to use TK from their BRAIN.
-Mental Discipline, assuming it will count as a Form/Aspect and therefore is mutually exclusive with the others, really REALLY should buff both Ranged and Melee Ego damage. This way it should provide more use for the TK set as a whole, as well as Telepathy, and therefore a Freeformer might actually choose it EVER over Form of the Tempest.
Along those lines...
TK is definitely now a ranged/melee hybrid set. Unfortunately, that doesn't allow it to use both types of attacks optimally in offensive roles since avenger doesn't buff melee and brawler flat out nerfs ranged.
Maybe we should let avenger buff melee damage and just get rid of brawler altogether
First on stats. The big problem with DEX/EGO is that crit chance and severity multiply against each other. This means you have a system of geometric returns. It doesn't matter how you divide them up between DEX and EGO, you will always gimp yourself by just having one. If you have 30% crit and 100% sev (you won't, sev diminishes too much, but it makes easier numbers for an example), you gain 30% extra damage. If you split it in 'half' (15% crit, 50% sev), you don't get half benefit, you get a quarter (7.5%) extra damage. That is actually the best ratio - if you break it up in some other way like is done on test, you get even less benefit.
The only reason SS DEX with EGO as a geared stat works on live is because the scaling on EGO is totally broken, making SS EGO just a waste of time. It is very heavily front-loaded. You get 50% sev with only around an 80-something investment. 120 gets you up around 60%, and 200 (i.e. superstat level) is 75%. 120 is about what you can get in an 'off' stat with a solid focus on gear. It just is not worth SSing EGO to go from 60-75% severity, particularly since a lot of crit's benefit is in other powers that already trigger just by the act of critting. These changes do not decouple DEX and EGO nor do they make EGO at all desirable as a standalone. All they really do is nerf DEX.
Look, some people say "DEX/crits - overpowered!" and probably don't mind a nerf. Except it isn't so. Similarly, several people mentioned how Archery and Munitions need crits to 'make up their poor damage'. Ok, except good ranged sets can use crits too. Poor sets isn't why DEX/crits is not broken. The main reason is that crits force you to heavily stat DEX and EGO. That means you can't fit in STR/CON realistically. So crits are really competing with the damage increase of Enrage. Only a good AoPM build can have the stats to pull off meaningful crits and meaningful levels of Enrage in the same build (and I've seen several AoPM 'build comparisons' that sell it far short damage-wise by not taking full advantage of this ability.) Such builds are usually range's desperate attempts to try to compete with the ridiculous damage boosts melee builds have.
You see, both focus and enrage give a huge damage strength buff. Each then also pairs with a second lesser buff. These lesser buffs are crits paired with focus, and the aggressor-style toggles paired with enrage. The current values of crits don't even quite compete with the toggles, i.e. DEX is not really overpowered. Focus/crits is even more OP than Enrage/toggle only because focus itself is ridiculous beyond compare, but that is a separate issue. Poor ranged builds can get either crits or enrage, and enrage simply does more damage. 'Course Enrage is a lot less convenient for ranged builds because no ranged attacks stack it up so you have the tedious and slow 'click Enrage 8 times over a couple minutes' and scream bloody murder when the unskippable cutscene resets it on you. Or skip an offensive passive and just take Defiance. All the melee builds using enrage build it just in the act of attacking - everyone who doesn't have these attacks is going Focus, the uber option that ranged builds just don't have. For ranged builds, crits vs enrage is really always-on for lesser damage vs pain in the butt but for better damage.
So, the last thing ranged builds need is to have their SS DEX + minor in EGO option nerfed even more, forcing SS EGO as well on them at the expense of an energy-management SS. Even for melee builds, crits are not the part that is overpowered - focus is. DEX is fine and has a standalone benefit, it gives chance to crit. Sure you need EGO to make the damage portion work, but you get that standalone benefit of triggering every in-game ability that happens when you crit. It also happens to scale Dragon's Wrath and focus, but that isn't DEX being overpowered, it is those abilities being so.
EGO needs the same. Currently, it has the half where it combos with DEX. What it needs is some other, standalone ability. In theory it has energy via blocking. In practice, if you run in protector, it doesn't matter what your EGO is - block and you have a full bar. If you are not in protector, again it doesn't matter because it is not enough energy income to block instead of energy building. Whatever EGO gets, it needs to be big, and it needs to compete with the what good Superstats give you. Namely, touch the core things you do every single fight. You build energy, you deal damage, you take damage, and you do this by activating powers which cost energy. Anything else is niche. Hold resist? Sure, if it worked, it'd be a nice extra. But will it compete with making all your self-heals do more healing? Will it compete with reducing the energy costs of all your powers and using those very powerful abilities with cooldowns more often? Will it compete with all the on-crit effects and scaling majorly OP powers like Focus and Dragon's Wrath? This is the sort of benefit EGO needs if it is to ever be worth a precious SS slot.
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REC and END are tied together much like DEX/EGO. Part of REC's big function is to increase your equilibrium, by a straight point-for-point increase. If you don't have the END to cover the extra points, it is lost. Adding 1/10th of those points back in is better, but just slightly. You still lose a lot of REC's function by taking it as a SS without END. And you don't generally take them both together anyway because the game has much better ways to recover energy than by blowing one of your precious superstats on REC, particularly once you already have END as a SS.
Why is REC so inferior? It basically is a mirror of INT, in a way - REC means your energy building increases, INT means that energy does more for you. It would be in parity, if the numbers were right, if every energy building mechanism in the game scaled on REC and only REC. You know, except that INT is also reducing cooldowns for you. But there is no parity. Too much energy returns in the game scale on something other than REC. The recent 'we'll add REC to these power's scaling too' doesn't help - just rubs in that you could take REC, or you could take the other stat and get additional benefit as well.
The fact that MSA scales on INT is particularly kicking REC while it is down. But thermal reverberation is a second major culprit since it scales on PRE. And since it is basically twice as good as any other energy unlock due to the fact that it gives you energy bursts twice per the three seconds (once for a guy on fire, once for you standing in the fire.) Only telepathic reverberation, on crowds, is comparable and oh look! Another one that scales on PRE. Plus then there is Dark Transfusion which kind of sort of 'scales' on CON. Not really, but using it with abandon is sure a lot safer with lots of hit points to back it up. All of these options (and a few others) are miles better than taking REC and gutting your damage by relying on your energy builder.
But even if you wanted to fix that by moving all those unlocks to REC, it would just be a nerf. Energy unlocks scaling on other stats means you get your energy PLUS the benefit of the other stat. Moving to REC would mean you just get the energy. *Maybe* if REC worked with every single energy unlock and gave you twice the benefit the other stat gave you? Exclusively, I mean, such that the energy returned is the best of REC or the other stat. In other words, if all it did was energy but so much more than the other stats? And this is an exclusive benefit of SSing it since REC as a secondary stat would give you about the same energy as the 'other' stat as a SS and they don't stack? Something like that might work. You can always find a use for more energy. Well, at least if you are a ranged character - the low costs and ridiculous boosts like Focus granting energy and the rush buff once again makes melee laugh at the hoops ranged builds are going through to try to get the damage to win those open missions.
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Now for the attacks. I only looked at the ranged ones, hoping to get a decent ranged set out of it. If you haven't figured it out, I much prefer ranged builds. Melee is just too easy, too much an "I win" button. But nope, it doesn't stack up. Not even for melee really. The toggle is in a set that more or less is forced into a crit-based build. So that mean your only real option is a crit + toggle build. Since both crits and the toggle give about the same increase and that increase is noticeably less than either focus or enrage, this combo is flat-out inferior to either crit + focus or toggle + enrage. And just to rub it in to ranged builds, even that is melee only.
Now for the ranged attacks themselves. It looks like the intent is to full maintain Assault, then 'burst' the stacks of ego leech you get with Lance. I tried that. The damage is poor.
First, Assault is just a bad power. I know it is tier 0, but LA is tier 0 and it is darn good. Just when it looks like the "we must stick it to ranged sets" mantra was loosing its grip, it roars back with a vengeance. Assault does less damage than Lightning Arc, doesn't have LA's accelerated increasing, and lacks the major +20% raw damage LA gets when the enemy has negative ions on it.
Second, Lance requires stacks of Ego Leech to do competitive damage. Popping a 5-stack of Ego Leech *is* good. But even with its bonus to regaining stacks, it is not enough for even a full maintain of Assault to gain back the stacks. But even if it was, 1.5 seconds of good damage does not make up for having to channel 4.5 seconds of bad damage.
AND to top it all off, you need to take and advantage out two single-target attacks to do your subpar damage. In the end, you just say, "Why am I not just going with Lightning Arc or Defile again?"
The toggle at rank 3 is 21% damage which is almost exactly the 20% Lightning Arc gets for negative ions. If you make the toggle apply to ranged damage, now it is much more palatable. The next thing you need to do is boost the chance to stack Ego Leech while under Lance's bonus such that a full maintain will basically always net you five stacks. Then the damage will be much more competitive. Because it requires two powers and because it is a slow combo that only really matters on SuperVillains on up (other stuff dies too fast), hopefully the damage is better than just Lightning Arcing it over and over. You'd have to tweak some more numbers, but the set would at least have a clear 'schtick'.
As it stands now, too many ranged sets are left in the cold because their damage is just horrid. Don't make this another, especially *after* its review. Fire has the ridiculous Unstable/Conflag/Firesnake combo to be very competitive. Defile has the melee-like aspect toggle to boosts its damage, plus its self resist debuff. Lightning Arc has flat-out good numbers plus the huge boost from Negative Ions and awesome energy efficiency with Ionic. Most of the other ranged sets have... bad damage. 'Course even these "good" ranged sets still don't hold a candle to the Dragon Wrath spam and its ilk, but at least they aren't embarrassed. Not completely. Not like a set like Archery or Munitions is.
Let's make Telekinesis not just another Archery or Munitions please.
Maybe a way to Improve Ego Form would be to add some kind defensive bonus that interacted with Ego leech, when it stacked or refreshed. Also, I actually like the blades on the ranged attacks, I think it looks cool, and very consistent with the sets look.
Edit: I also think the stat changes might not be as bad folks make them out to be, I can see where the Devs were coming from, and I think their intention was the opposite of being perceived, in an attempt to make them stand alone stats. A few quick tests with KI/HI unlocks with a subpar Dex/Int build (163 dex/ 208 Int/ 53 Ego), I was still crit'ing enough to proc the unlocks every 4 seconds.
30% is not optimal. The soft cap kicks in at 32%. My level 27 toon hits that softcap with 148. Your level 31 has 149 which means you are below the softcap, and hence, below optimal.
Again, believe whatever you want. But the consensus of forumites who test this stuff to oblivion all disagree with you. Again, maybe if you're an OCD min/maxer, but honestly, I'm not that anal retentive. Optimal != maxed. I'd post the chart that shows the "optimal" values by level, but honestly I don't see the point.
No. My numbers showed a noticeable drop in crit chance on the quarry toon. And as I pointed out, that's a double hit for a toon that is now going to do less damage from fewer criticals, and less damage from having less energy return.
And as I pointed out, the difference in extra damage from crits is less than 2%, which is perfectly in line with my results. I also pointed out that it's statistically unlikely that anyone is going to notice a difference in energy due to a 5% loss of crit due to the way the energy unlocks work. Hey, here's an idea, why don't you actually play test the changes instead of DOOM mongering? I know proclaiming the end of the world is a lot easier, but it's not particularly helpful, especially when the math is not on your side.
But looking at DEX/EGO and DEX/INT Quarry is looking at the best possible cases for the DEX nerf since they still both end up with decent levels of EGO fairly easily. Looking at my MA Tank:
Live:
DEX 259
CON 315
EGO 81
crit % 32.6
sev % 47.1
PTS:
crit %26.7
sev %56.6
The dex nerf means that instead of proc'ing tempest and getting energy on about 1/3 of hits, he's down to about 1/4 of hits. That in turn lowers his DPS because the energy return on focus for this toon is 36 when it procs.
It also takes this toon longer now to get to 8 stacks of focus which makes for a 3rd hit on the DPS.
Sounds like it on paper, but it just doesn't seem to bear out that way in practice. Why don't you go try it instead of complaining about it with absolutely no proof?
I keep giving you numbers that show a noticeable effect from not tying DEX to EGO. Just because you wat to call it negligible doesn't make the effect go away.
I call it negligible cause IT IS. If it has little to no perceivable impact on gameplay what else would you call it? Oh yeah, that's right, you haven't PLAYED it to know for sure.
Tying two stats together means less variety. It gets us farther from the "be the hero you want to be" slogan. So while I have no doubt that you're right that the point was to tie the two of them together, my argument is that such a decision is a poor one.
I believe every stat should be useful in and of itself. I shouldn't have to take EGO if I want DEX any more than I should have to take DEX if I want EGO. I mean, if I want CON, I don't have to take STR. If I want INT, I don't have to take PRE. Why should these two stats now be stuck as requirements for the other?
Dunno, you'll have to ask the devs. I'm not a mind-reader. Clearly they have a purpose in mind for rebalancing the crit/severity mechanic. And no one is forcing you to take anything you don't want. Just because certain combinations work better together doesn't mean you MUST go that way if you don't want to. There are always choices. I know that's difficult for a cherry-picking min/maxer to understand, but TRY.
Oh, and the 400-100 thing...
If someone has 400 CON and 100 STR, they average 250.
If someone else has 300 CON and 200 STR, they average 250.
If a third someone has 250 CON and 250 STR, they average 250.
So ya, why did they need to rebalance their stats?
Prior to the change in passives you could rely on only ONE superstat. So you could pump up CON to 400 and leave STR at 100, and the game calculated you at 400. After the change that was no longer true; you had to make an effort to pump up BOTH superstats because now they were averaged, and even after doing so you still would come out less than you had before. And yet life went on.
What the passive change did was freed slotted passives from being tied to specific superstats (with one exception). It INCREASED the variety of toons in the game. This in turn helped with that whole "be the hero you want to be" thing.
It's funny you mention that, because at the time I clearly recall the same amount of whining and ranting and DOOOM calling as I'm seeing here. "Oh no, if you do this all my characters will be broken beyond repair!". "Oh no, the whole game is going to collapse in on itself!" "For the love of God WHY are you doing this to us, every single one of my characters will be UNPLAYABLE!!!" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I even remember a lot of people going on and on about how the changes will lead to everyone going DEX/EGO for everything, since all other choices were going to be gimped in comparison. Yeah, that didn't happen either.
Kinda like "oh no! I'm losing 5% of my crits, so I'm getting double-triple super secret nerfed, cause I'm doing SO much less damage [proved to be not true], my energy recovery is a joke [statistically unlikely] and DOOOOM! it's gonna take me forever to build full stacks of focus [where "forever" = less than an extra second?]"
After awhile you all start to sound like the adults in Charlie Brown. And I know when it gets to that point it's time for me to duck out. Y'all are now free to wallow in your DOOOM mongering self-pity without anyone like me trying to spoil your fun. Carry on.
I remember a while back Ame said that Ego would become something that all force users would want to gear for... looking at the Ego changes I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed. As it stands Force is a VERY energy hungry set meaning END or INT or pretty much required for Force meaning tying ranged knockback to Ego is a definate nerf in my books. Before Force users could SS for strength or at least gear heavily for it to increase the effectiveness of our knocks adding to our damage (although granted against Master Villains it doesn't seem to work as well since they have an annoying habit of not taking fall damage. Especially in instances).
Also as others have stated this hurts characters who are statting anything other than Dex/Ego since these changes have made the two stats very much reliant on one another (instead of Ego being reliant on Dex) which hurts Dex/anything-that-is-not-Ego Toons.
It was brought up during discussions about potential changes to improve EGO: Critical hit chance is much more powerful than critical hit severity. The latter is dependent on the former. In a vacuum, gluing DEX/EGO makes a small shuffle on the ratio of chance:severity. The damage output would be more or less the same in the long run. However, there are nice powers that reward getting a critical hit without a care to severity. This is present in many games besides CO as well. So nice that people give them consideration and will try to work them into their characters. This has allowed DEX (due to it influencing critical chance) to be flourish without caring for EGO. There are many characters that run with some combination of Form of the Tempest, Killer Instinct, and Hunter's Instinct (the last one is theoretical; HI is in need of a practicality overhaul). This case is where the DEX/EGO blur matters. Unfortunately, this case has become some ubiquitous that almost anyone who has a remotely decent critical hit chance will have at least one of those powers. These may or may not be fixed with providing secondary energy unlocks for more frameworks and by having powers that reward or scale off critical severity while ignoring critical hit chance. Although honestly, Form of the Tempest (and likewise Molecular Self-Assembly) is very universal and probably won't lose their competitiveness anytime soon. People may whine about slowed energy return, but the lack of good alternate options means people will mostly stick with it. Were there other energy return options, people would be slightly peeved that their bonus energy return was weakened. But right now... it and MSA are the most universal options at the moment. Also, mixing DEX/EGO like so makes them more interdependent and not less.
TL;DR version: Part of problem of the DEX/EGO fusion is due to powers rewarding crit chance and ignoring crit severity, the other part is due to lack of energy return options. This has made too many people depend on it. Even if it didn't butt-hurt the masses' dependency on such powers, fusing the two stats cheapens both of them in terms of uniqueness and ability to stand alone.
What EGO needs is a something significant attached to it. Let's see the stats offer right now...
STR - Knock resistance, melee knock power, melee damage bonus
DEX - Critical hit chance
REC - Equilibrium
CON - Max hit points with no diminishing returns
PRE - Threat management, healing bonus, and passive support bonus on allies (except IDF)
INT - Cooldown and energy cost reduction
EGO - Hold resistance, ranged knock power, critical severity, energy returned on block
END - Max energy points with no diminishing returns
EGO needs something big. It has a bunch of little things going for it, but nothing major to make someone focus on EGO without focusing on DEX as well. Hold resistance, while much welcomed, isn't big due to its situational worth. It doesn't have to end up rivaling DEX in anyway. DEX will probably still remain one of the best stats in the game. EGO just needs something strong and universal not tied down to DEX. I'd suggest something like modify duration of buffs/debuffs but I don't feel it's universal enough. Could be useful for controllers, buffers, and debuffers... but in a general sense? Not really.
Bug: Mental Discipline's Zero-Point-Advantage is not proccing ID blades.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Take any passive besides Ego Form (or no passive at all)
2) Take Mental Discipline and it's ZPA
3) Enter combat
4) ID Blades fails to proc.
First on stats. The big problem with DEX/EGO is that crit chance and severity multiply against each other. This means you have a system of geometric returns. It doesn't matter how you divide them up between DEX and EGO, you will always gimp yourself by just having one. If you have 30% crit and 100% sev (you won't, sev diminishes too much, but it makes easier numbers for an example), you gain 30% extra damage. If you split it in 'half' (15% crit, 50% sev), you don't get half benefit, you get a quarter (7.5%) extra damage. That is actually the best ratio - if you break it up in some other way like is done on test, you get even less benefit.
The only reason SS DEX with EGO as a geared stat works on live is because the scaling on EGO is totally broken, making SS EGO just a waste of time. It is very heavily front-loaded. You get 50% sev with only around an 80-something investment. 120 gets you up around 60%, and 200 (i.e. superstat level) is 75%. 120 is about what you can get in an 'off' stat with a solid focus on gear. It just is not worth SSing EGO to go from 60-75% severity, particularly since a lot of crit's benefit is in other powers that already trigger just by the act of critting. These changes do not decouple DEX and EGO nor do they make EGO at all desirable as a standalone. All they really do is nerf DEX.
Look, some people say "DEX/crits - overpowered!" and probably don't mind a nerf. Except it isn't so. Similarly, several people mentioned how Archery and Munitions need crits to 'make up their poor damage'. Ok, except good ranged sets can use crits too. Poor sets isn't why DEX/crits is not broken. The main reason is that crits force you to heavily stat DEX and EGO. That means you can't fit in STR/CON realistically. So crits are really competing with the damage increase of Enrage. Only a good AoPM build can have the stats to pull off meaningful crits and meaningful levels of Enrage in the same build (and I've seen several AoPM 'build comparisons' that sell it far short damage-wise by not taking full advantage of this ability.) Such builds are usually range's desperate attempts to try to compete with the ridiculous damage boosts melee builds have.
You see, both focus and enrage give a huge damage strength buff. Each then also pairs with a second lesser buff. These lesser buffs are crits paired with focus, and the aggressor-style toggles paired with enrage. The current values of crits don't even quite compete with the toggles, i.e. DEX is not really overpowered. Focus/crits is even more OP than Enrage/toggle only because focus itself is ridiculous beyond compare, but that is a separate issue. Poor ranged builds can get either crits or enrage, and enrage simply does more damage. 'Course Enrage is a lot less convenient for ranged builds because no ranged attacks stack it up so you have the tedious and slow 'click Enrage 8 times over a couple minutes' and scream bloody murder when the unskippable cutscene resets it on you. Or skip an offensive passive and just take Defiance. All the melee builds using enrage build it just in the act of attacking - everyone who doesn't have these attacks is going Focus, the uber option that ranged builds just don't have. For ranged builds, crits vs enrage is really always-on for lesser damage vs pain in the butt but for better damage.
So, the last thing ranged builds need is to have their SS DEX + minor in EGO option nerfed even more, forcing SS EGO as well on them at the expense of an energy-management SS. Even for melee builds, crits are not the part that is overpowered - focus is. DEX is fine and has a standalone benefit, it gives chance to crit. Sure you need EGO to make the damage portion work, but you get that standalone benefit of triggering every in-game ability that happens when you crit. It also happens to scale Dragon's Wrath and focus, but that isn't DEX being overpowered, it is those abilities being so.
EGO needs the same. Currently, it has the half where it combos with DEX. What it needs is some other, standalone ability. In theory it has energy via blocking. In practice, if you run in protector, it doesn't matter what your EGO is - block and you have a full bar. If you are not in protector, again it doesn't matter because it is not enough energy income to block instead of energy building. Whatever EGO gets, it needs to be big, and it needs to compete with the what good Superstats give you. Namely, touch the core things you do every single fight. You build energy, you deal damage, you take damage, and you do this by activating powers which cost energy. Anything else is niche. Hold resist? Sure, if it worked, it'd be a nice extra. But will it compete with making all your self-heals do more healing? Will it compete with reducing the energy costs of all your powers and using those very powerful abilities with cooldowns more often? Will it compete with all the on-crit effects and scaling majorly OP powers like Focus and Dragon's Wrath? This is the sort of benefit EGO needs if it is to ever be worth a precious SS slot.
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REC and END are tied together much like DEX/EGO. Part of REC's big function is to increase your equilibrium, by a straight point-for-point increase. If you don't have the END to cover the extra points, it is lost. Adding 1/10th of those points back in is better, but just slightly. You still lose a lot of REC's function by taking it as a SS without END. And you don't generally take them both together anyway because the game has much better ways to recover energy than by blowing one of your precious superstats on REC, particularly once you already have END as a SS.
Why is REC so inferior? It basically is a mirror of INT, in a way - REC means your energy building increases, INT means that energy does more for you. It would be in parity, if the numbers were right, if every energy building mechanism in the game scaled on REC and only REC. You know, except that INT is also reducing cooldowns for you. But there is no parity. Too much energy returns in the game scale on something other than REC. The recent 'we'll add REC to these power's scaling too' doesn't help - just rubs in that you could take REC, or you could take the other stat and get additional benefit as well.
The fact that MSA scales on INT is particularly kicking REC while it is down. But thermal reverberation is a second major culprit since it scales on PRE. And since it is basically twice as good as any other energy unlock due to the fact that it gives you energy bursts twice per the three seconds (once for a guy on fire, once for you standing in the fire.) Only telepathic reverberation, on crowds, is comparable and oh look! Another one that scales on PRE. Plus then there is Dark Transfusion which kind of sort of 'scales' on CON. Not really, but using it with abandon is sure a lot safer with lots of hit points to back it up. All of these options (and a few others) are miles better than taking REC and gutting your damage by relying on your energy builder.
But even if you wanted to fix that by moving all those unlocks to REC, it would just be a nerf. Energy unlocks scaling on other stats means you get your energy PLUS the benefit of the other stat. Moving to REC would mean you just get the energy. *Maybe* if REC worked with every single energy unlock and gave you twice the benefit the other stat gave you? Exclusively, I mean, such that the energy returned is the best of REC or the other stat. In other words, if all it did was energy but so much more than the other stats? And this is an exclusive benefit of SSing it since REC as a secondary stat would give you about the same energy as the 'other' stat as a SS and they don't stack? Something like that might work. You can always find a use for more energy. Well, at least if you are a ranged character - the low costs and ridiculous boosts like Focus granting energy and the rush buff once again makes melee laugh at the hoops ranged builds are going through to try to get the damage to win those open missions.
I don't know who you are, but you speak great wisdom in these paragraphs especially.
I find these ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your kool-aid. Er, newsletter.
I don't know offhand but in my opinion, Ego doesn't need to be splitting Dexs' crit chance off, it needs to share in End and Rec as an Energy stat. The more I think about it, the more I come to believe that the one thing Dex-Ego builds lack [barring Focus and Rush which change things for some melee] is energy management.
Plus, Rec is in a way located in the wrong gear slots. End and Int are both Utility gear stats, but Recovery is Offense? Why exactly? This just means a player can effectively "tripple stack" by super statting End and Int, and gearing for rec for ridiculous energy management, only needed on a very few builds. Some would even argue those few builds aren't even top performers. No dex or ego for crits, no str for Rage buff, no con or pre for survivability after all.
I'm not sure what Ego really needs, but by making ego a hodge-podge of many little effects, you run the risk of making it too good or necessary to too many builds, or you make it end up over nerfing the other stats to make Ego look better, which is what has happened to Dex as far as I can tell.
Even if ego needs a few small 'bonuses' like scaling energy return on blocking, it also needs to have it's one big thing, that no other stat does at all, something useful to many builds and not just one style of build.
Currently, Crit effectiveness is too front loaded to serve in this capacity.
Again, believe whatever you want. But the consensus of forumites who test this stuff to oblivion all disagree with you. Again, maybe if you're an OCD min/maxer, but honestly, I'm not that anal retentive. Optimal != maxed. I'd post the chart that shows the "optimal" values by level, but honestly I don't see the point.
Don't need a chart. 32% was stated by the devs way back when as the point where diminishing returns kick in.
And as I pointed out, the difference in extra damage from crits is less than 2%, which is perfectly in line with my results. I also pointed out that it's statistically unlikely that anyone is going to notice a difference in energy due to a 5% loss of crit due to the way the energy unlocks work. Hey, here's an idea, why don't you actually play test the changes instead of DOOM mongering? I know proclaiming the end of the world is a lot easier, but it's not particularly helpful, especially when the math is not on your side.
And as I've tried to point out repeatedly...it's not just 2%. It's a hit to Tempest which builds stacks slower and get fewer energy returns from crits. It's a hit to munitions and archery which get lower energy return.
Also, going from 1/3 crit chance to 1/4 crit chance is not "a 5% loss of crit".
Last, I did test on my MA tank, my dex/ego muni toon, and my dex/int quarry toon. I always test. Guess what happened?
On my dex/ego toon, not much of anything. In fact, once I factor in his entire build which includes arcane circle, I could care less about the stat change since muni's energy return was never enough for him anyway.
On my dex/int archery toon, slight hit in damage on fewer criticals. However, the loss of energy was negligible because she never runs out of energy anyway.
My MA tank gets nerfed. It took longer to build up to 8 stacks of focus which meant lower DPS. Energy return was slower which meant more running the energy builder which mean lower DPS. Critical hits happened less often which meant lower DPS.
It was totally shocking how that all worked out.
Sounds like it on paper, but it just doesn't seem to bear out that way in practice. Why don't you go try it instead of complaining about it with absolutely no proof?
See above.
I call it negligible cause IT IS. If it has little to no perceivable impact on gameplay what else would you call it? Oh yeah, that's right, you haven't PLAYED it to know for sure.
*rolls eyes*
Dunno, you'll have to ask the devs. I'm not a mind-reader. Clearly they have a purpose in mind for rebalancing the crit/severity mechanic. And no one is forcing you to take anything you don't want. Just because certain combinations work better together doesn't mean you MUST go that way if you don't want to. There are always choices. I know that's difficult for a cherry-picking min/maxer to understand, but TRY.
Cherry picking min/maxer? I kinda like that. Doesn't fit, but it's cute.
Prior to the change in passives you could rely on only ONE superstat. So you could pump up CON to 400 and leave STR at 100, and the game calculated you at 400. After the change that was no longer true; you had to make an effort to pump up BOTH superstats because now they were averaged, and even after doing so you still would come out less than you had before. And yet life went on.
You're going to have to explain this point better since it makes no sense. I already pointed out you can still go 400 CON and get the full benefit of 400 points into defiance since defiance didn't change. It was kinda the only passive that did that before the change, and it still is.
For example, regen used to be REC/CON. You needed both to get full benefit of what regen does. Not that very many people did that because taking a slightly weaker regen to get a superstat other than REC was just too tempting. Now, you don't even have to take a slightly weaker regen. In other words, reality is exactly the opposite of what you claim. You don't have to focus on both superstats since you can get to the same place just by really maxxing out one (which is why I pointed out that 400 - 100, 300-200, and 250-250 all get you to the same place...notice how 400 doesn't hurt and spreading out 250-250 doesn't help in averages?)
It's funny you mention that, because at the time I clearly recall the same amount of whining and ranting and DOOOM calling as I'm seeing here. "Oh no, if you do this all my characters will be broken beyond repair!". "Oh no, the whole game is going to collapse in on itself!" "For the love of God WHY are you doing this to us, every single one of my characters will be UNPLAYABLE!!!" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I even remember a lot of people going on and on about how the changes will lead to everyone going DEX/EGO for everything, since all other choices were going to be gimped in comparison. Yeah, that didn't happen either.
I remember the DEX/EGO bit...but not the doom part. In fact, I remember a lot of people really liking the idea of added flexibility in builds. Now, there were a few people irritated that it'd make it easier to min/max build toons (which it did), but no one claimed it was going to nerf characters (how would that possibly have worked) and definitely no doom.
Kinda like "oh no! I'm losing 5% of my crits, so I'm getting double-triple super secret nerfed, cause I'm doing SO much less damage [proved to be not true], my energy recovery is a joke [statistically unlikely] and DOOOOM! it's gonna take me forever to build full stacks of focus [where "forever" = less than an extra second?]"
Nothing secret about it, and it's a lot more than 5%. I'm also not crying doom. In fact, my biggest complaint is tying two stats together which reduces build flexibility, and hence toon variety.
Going back to my MA tank. If the devs leave stats exactly the way they are, I'll just tweak him. He'll go STR/CON enrage bestial, and I'll switch out his limited ego for some limited int to push MSA. It'll take me 5 minutes to make the change, and I suspect I'll actually get more benefit from that build than I do from MA-dex.
Only reason I haven't done it before is I really hate how the bestial aspect looks, and I consider appearance and theme more important than squeezing every last drop of damage out of a build. But I'm pretty sure I can make a new costume to hide the ugly aura and/or convince the devs to just turn it completely off (like they did to the ego form now)
LIVE:
3.4% crit chance (3.4% from Dex, 0% from Ego)
74.4% crit severity (0% from Dex, 74.4% from Ego)
Effective DPS Increase of +2.53% damage from crits
TEST:
10.0% crit chance (3.8% from Dex, 6.2% from Ego)
68.7% crit severity (4.2% from Dex, 64.5% from Ego)
Effective DPS Increase of +6.87% damage from crits
Ok, the big surprise here is that a low Dex contributed MORE crit chance on Test than it does currently on Live...
Does anyone have a 200 Dex, 200 Ego character on Live and Test who can chart the change at 'equilibreum'?
Don't need a chart. 32% was stated by the devs way back when as the point where diminishing returns kick in.
Without digging too deep into the nuances of optimization, I will mention that the gear itself has dimishing returns on high numbers in a single stat. Items with a peak bonus of 70 have 6-8 fewer total points than items with a peak bonus of 60. Giving up that last 2% (30% vs. 32%) can give you a net gain of 30-40 points overall, and if those are going into weaker stats the curves may reward those extra points quite heavily.
In other words I don't think ithere is really a one true way to be found anywhere in the 30-32% range - its too sensitive to how you leverage your other stats. I try to shoot for 200-220 myself. There is just no profit in picking a fight with dimishing returns .
Without digging too deep into the nuances of optimization, I will mention that the gear itself has dimishing returns on high numbers in a single stat. Items with a peak bonus of 70 have 6-8 fewer total points than items with a peak bonus of 60. Giving up that last 2% (30% vs. 32%) can give you a net gain of 30-40 points overall, and if those are going into weaker stats the curves may reward those extra points quite heavily.
In other words I don't think ithere is really a one true way to be found anywhere in the 30-32% range - its too sensitive to how you leverage your other stats. I try to shoot for 200-220 myself. There is just no profit in picking a fight with dimishing returns .
Scaled algo gear kinda sorta fixes that. Elite scaled algo gear totally fixes it. It is a pain getting the right gear since algo is pretty much a random grab bag of what it'll throw together, and even with all my toons, I prolly toss 90% of what I get onto the AH or into crafting mats because I can't use it.
Needless to say, I'm kinda hoping the acclaim gear pass gives us good stuff at reasonable costs so that I can go pick exactly what I want rather than hoping I win the lottery 9 times per toon.
Which is sort of a bad sign since it tops my list as single stupidest thing they ever did in this game. I'm eternally grateful that person doesn't work here anymore.
I'm the oddball again - I run 7 purples, one algo blue and a really odd reward blue from Nemcon. Not becaue I haven't had the time to get any algo I want, but because for my particular mechanical abuse, the defense values from purples are more desirable than the algo stat bonus :rolleyes:.
Needless to say, I'm kinda hoping the acclaim gear pass gives us good stuff at reasonable costs so that I can go pick exactly what I want rather than hoping I win the lottery 9 times per toon.
I'd like to see more worthwhile Purples in general. The Appocalypse ones were insulting. Purple (ab)users haven't had anything to look forward to basically since launch. That's kinda jacked up as itemization schemes go.
Don't need a chart. 32% was stated by the devs way back when as the point where diminishing returns kick in.
I believe 30% was stated by the devs as the point where diminishing returns start kicking in. 32% was the number that has been accepted by some players as "point where it's still worth it". That aside, I wonder if there would be as much rage if the devs lowered the crit scaling rather than fusing DEX/EGO. I feel there's more rage about people incorporating Form of the Tempest losing crit chance than any of the other changes.
Plus, Rec is in a way located in the wrong gear slots. End and Int are both Utility gear stats, but Recovery is Offense? Why exactly?
REC does need a boost. It's considered offense due to alpha-strike potential. With enough, you can open with Torrent of Arrows, Gigabolt, Force Cascade, or whatever. And keep on going longer (and hoping your energy returns will start kicking in if enemies are still standing). But it lacks the permanence of STR and DEX. REC loses its advantage after you've cleaned out your starting energy and your energy returns fail to keep up. Someone can argue that a nice opening can make a lasting difference later on, but this is less true with bosses and whatever few sufficiently long non-boss engagements. Also, opening with a hit of Dark Transfusion sort of renders REC obsolete, especially if you have high END. I think it could work as a boost to energy regeneration until equilibrium. I originally though energy decay reduction could be placed in REC as well, but I now think that END could take it.
Last, I did test on my MA tank, my dex/ego muni toon, and my dex/int quarry toon. I always test. Guess what happened?
On my dex/ego toon, not much of anything. In fact, once I factor in his entire build which includes arcane circle, I could care less about the stat change since muni's energy return was never enough for him anyway.
On my dex/int archery toon, slight hit in damage on fewer criticals. However, the loss of energy was negligible because she never runs out of energy anyway.
My MA tank gets nerfed. It took longer to build up to 8 stacks of focus which meant lower DPS. Energy return was slower which meant more running the energy builder which mean lower DPS. Critical hits happened less often which meant lower DPS.
It was totally shocking how that all worked out.
So out of 3 toons tested only 1 was adversely affected, and by a margin you failed to quantify in any way. So yeah dude, I'm totally [un]impressed. You really got me there. See folks, irrefutable proof that this change will completely and totally destroy all your characters! Silly me with my logic, reasoning, and math. It simply can't hold a candle to blind speculation.
Unfortunately with the way crit severity and crit chance scale, a moderate investment (around 100 points) of ego on my force character produces a completely negligible crit chance.
Now, all this means is that I lose globals when I shift my stats from strength to ego. Other than that my character and the way I play him doesn't change. But the crit changes to Ego don't make it viable as a secondary stat when it comes to crits. The scaling on crit chance is just way too steep to be anything but superstat territory.
So while force characters who (like me) aren't superstatted for knockback will probably want to gear for Ego like Ame said, it's not going to be anything to write home about.
TK is a Ranged/Melee hybrid set but does not synergyze range and melee the same way Quarry bridges the gap between MA and munitions/archery.
EGO Form:
This passive is a range/melee hybrid passive and so the ratio of defensive to offensive buff on this power has to be comparable to Quarry to be acceptable. Quarry should be the standard for ranged melee hybrid performance
Suggestion:
a. The obvious choice is to make ego form a quarry clone by giving it a chance to dodge. Its not very original but you cant go wrong with it.
b. Add a pulsing PBAOE sleep affect around the ego form user when ever he uses a melee attack for his protection. This would be a unique way to add survivability when surrounded in melee range, reinforce synergy within the mentalist set and it keeps ego form users from being too defensively potent.
TK lance:
TK Lance needs a secondary affect that makes it useful for ranged melee hybrids. for example, Ebon ruin can be advantaged as a resist debuff on top of the heal debuff making it useful even to brawler toons as a ranged single target debuff.
Suggestion:
I would be interested to see TK Lance fill the niche of the best heavy hitter for kiting.
a. Remove the self root from tk lance so that it can be used on the move like ego hold. This would make the power very useful for ranged melee hybrids that want an attack that they can do good damage with and move between range and melee smoothly. This would also give it a niche for ranged TK users as the best melee kiters
b. Add a root and/or snare to TK lance to that you can use it to do dps and dictate the pace/range of the fight. this would still be helpful to range/melee hybrids and help ranged TK users kite.
Ego Blade Annihilation:
This power was better for ranged melee hybrids before because it allowed you to deal damage at range and then pick off vulnerable targets with a quick melee burst when their hp is low. now its just a less attractive version of Ego Blade Breach
Suggestion:
a. Return Ego Blade Annihilation to how it was before, not many people seem to like the new version any way. With TKs new ranged ability, the old EBA now has a use as a situational melee power for ranged/melee hybrids.
b. Do some other thing that will give EBA a use for people that are not completely melee.
c. Please consider folding EBAs damage into one single hit. Splitting damage in 2 makes it less effective against resistant foes (the ones you are most likely to use it on).
Also, the animation for the power does not reflect 2 hits.
Mental Discipline:
Again, in a hybrid set this power should buff ranged and melee damage. As a melee only power this is inferior to all other forms especially the MA forms.
Suggestion:
Make Mental Discipline buff all TK damage.
Comments
Especially for the AT, NEEDS some anti-squishie built in somewhere...
Repeating it doesn't make it true. But you're welcome to believe whatever fantasy makes you happy. Anything above 30% from superstats is considered optimal. And I meet that. Just because you're anal retentive about having 34% doesn't mean the rest of us at 30% are below normal.
Which it didn't, cause your numbers came out exactly the same. Epic fail.
Since math has already shown it's a damage nerf of less than 2% in most cases, I don't share your concern. Actually, in one of your cases you will be doing almost 3% MORE damage. Go figure.
If you're running Quarry and SSing INT (which you should be doing if you're using Quarry) the boost to EGO is going to make up for the loss of crits from DEX. The numbers have already shown that. The only exception would be someone who has a ridiculous amount of DEX and virtually no EGO. So yes, they will need to adjust. Sometime change hurts, and outlier cases will sometimes get hammered. Such is life.
The numbers simply don't support your hysterical rant. And I suspect the devs already know this.
It seems that was the whole point of the change. So I guess mission accomplished. Y'know, kinda like how superstat scaling was changed to an average of both stats, not just the one that was highest, which forced all those poor souls who had 400 of one stat and 100 of the other to <gasp!> rebalance their stats. And life goes on.
Okay, fine, bring math into this thread and prove me wrong. :P
That said - yes, it does look like a lot. What's the formula anyhow to determine the average damage bonus due to crits?
-Strength was not a stat that needed nerfing at all, and that's what this change has done. IMO leave Str alone as the Knock strength/resistance stat, and have Ego as the mez strength/resistance stat.
-The Dex/Ego stat changes don't really achieve anything except to nerf Dex as a standalone stat and to tie Dex and Ego even closer together than before. Under these changes, Ego will still suck as a standalone stat.
-Rec still needs something more than that to be a useful Superstat. So does End, actually.
Take the crit amount and multiply by the severity percentage:
% extra damage = crit * severity percentage
For example, if you have a 30.2% crit and 68.9% severity the formula looks like this:
% extra damage = 30.2 * 0.689 = 20.8%
Not really accurate unless you have absolutely no EGO to speak of. See above.
Ahem.
Telekinetic Assault is having the exact same animation issue as Crushing Wave does on live: Which is to say it doesn't animate 90% of the time. You hold your hands out, the target takes damage, but the knives don't fly most of the time. I had to use the power several times before I ever even saw the animation before that I thought it was just a really invisible looking attack.
Or maybe a formula like this: (DEX + (EGO/2)) = 200 = softcap With this method SSing Dex alone can get the softcap and SSing Ego alone will give a bonus to crit without reaching the softcap and SSing both Dex and Ego will not result in an overpowering crit rate as long as the diminishing returns are diminishing enough.
I'd really like to know what level and stat spread you're using to make the claim that this stat change is a buff for anyone that had Dex as a SS. The best case scenario seems to be a SS Dex/Ego character and that's only to stay the same, everyone else is getting a nerf.
With Dex in the 200 range I'm loosing 8% of my chance to Crit. SS Ego is the only thing which will get me enough extra +% chance to Crit to get my near my current live server levels. To reach my old level of chance to Crit I'm going to have to focus even more of gearing up my Ego. I don't want to do that was I also value other stats like.
The DEX changes affects my Super Stat DEX (non SS EGO) buillds greatly. You've greatly dimished the damage and energy generation on several of my characters. It will take my longer to generate stacks of Foxcus. And less non-energy building energy generation.
AllI got to ask is "WHY?" Why complicate things by mixing DEX/EGO interactions in regards to Crits. IT just baffles me.
I think psychics who want to survive in this game will likely have a self heal and it's a good idea to have PRE for such. PRE/EGO is gonna let you heal and have hold resistence, but you're not going to do anything better than a DEX/EGO build.
basically I feel like you've re-married these stats when they've been begging for divorce.
Not to mention that you've completely ignored the first part of that equasion.. hold severity.In fact you seem to be avoiding holds in general. Let me explain.
Root/Snare - completely unchanged. No way to mitigate, but luckily you can still use powers.
Paralyze/maintained paralyze - You know we hate the current implementation. You gave us resistance.. and us who depend on holds have no counter.
Sleep - Sucky but rightfully so.
Confuses - WASTE
Placates - WASTE
- Telekinetic Lance rank 3 is Defile. It sounds the same. It even looks the same, only pink.
- Telekinesis has a description flub in that it does Telethrow 4.7, Telethrow 4.9 or something along those lines when examining the contribution in the 'purchase ranks and advantages' window.
- Ego Reverberation's information when purchasing is copy/pasted from Spirit Reverberation, including it mentioning it feeds off of fear.
A couple observations/concerns then:Mark my words.. there'll be a time when you have perfectly good blocks in a room in Demonflame you'd think you could use and when you tap Telekinesis, you'll attack someone with a book. A book that does maybe 400 damage when hurled by someone with 300+ strength.
If you're concerned about screens filling up with 'Press Z to Pick Up X', then you can either make the weighty so it limits just who can lift it or you can do what I hope you will eventually do is apply a round of polish to the entire Pick Up & Throw mechanic.
I was just saying exactly this an hour ago while playing. Got the 0 point advantage yet I see no dual ego blades. Hmm...
Also while we're at it can we can some sort of animation running to remind the player that mental discipline is running? Just something.
Offtopic: Very excited with changes :P will see lot of psi from now
MA characters and Dodge Brick characters can kiss their awesomeness goodbye. Since their chance to crit is reduced by 1/3rd hence weakening those that equip Form of The Tempest.
We will be forced to take ego reducing the benefits we could've had from other stats. Result ? A giant rise in AoPM users.
Besides that the ranged powers are a bit odd.
TK Assault is like a slightly weaker Lightning Arc.
TK Burst has a nice area of effect but damage is poor and TK Lance even when fired with 5 stacks of Ego Leech is weaker than a full maintain of TK Assault, which shouldn't be the case for a T3 skill.
TK changes:
Tk power:
This is great to use, but i'm concerned about map where there is nothing to send flying.
Could we get it work like if there is nothing we just rip a piece of the floor and send it at the target face
Size could be determined by rank and ego stat.
Also I think it should be easier to lift object perhaps not as easy as strength but still better than now.
TK shield
Well there is no change in this power so it will just be a suggestion.
Could we have a "laser knight type" advantage on this power.
Right now the only shield power with this type of advantage have a strong technology look.
I think that TK powerset is actually a good fit to have it, as it's a range/melee powerset and a LaserKnight+lingering effect would be very nice to have.
TK Lance
I will not comment on damage yet as i was very sad to see that animation,graphic and sound is just defile
TK Assault
why is there bit of thing flying everywhere?
Otherwise I like it a lot.
Mental Discipline
Shoud buff range damage as well.
Stats changes:
REC changes:
It's nice but if it could gain a bit more like increasing automatic energy recovery
Ego changes:
very nice since it's clearly helping my force user who never had any strengh but instead REC/END with ego and presence heavily geared.
DEX changes:
One concern I have is for my archery character.
I have hunter's instinct as energy unlock and as archery are not quick attack like munition I find kind of hard to gain energy.
To compensate for the small loss in crit change could we have in return more energy returned with this power?
Stats proposition:
END:
Could it have something like slowing energy decay, it would be a nice addition for toons with high END and low REC.
Originally, this tied into my ideas for "Thematic Structuring", which is conceptually both a framework to earn the ability to perform such game mechanic modifications by investing thematically by powers, advantage points, stats and whatever else tied into the system, and also a framework to educate and direct the player in how to work towards thematic and functional goals (as the above "tag" suggestion could do for some powers).
More simply, and relating to the the actual state of the game at the moment, a Toggle, Advantage for a Toggle (currently, Mental Discipline seems a fitting place for an Advantage choice), or an "Innate" type Power (currently only Energy Unlocks), could be the vehicle for resolving this game mechanic and thematic issue.
Buff the crit figures on dex and critical severity on ego so that this doesn't work out a nerf for players who just take one of these stats. Many people take both if they take one, but not everyone does and sometimes it's more important for them to crit often than to crit high, especially with dex. If the end result is a slight buff to both dex and ego, sobeit. Everyone will get the same buff so everyone's a winner.
Buff recovery more. It's still a lacklustre superstat.
Buff Ego Form. It needs some defensive abilities. I suggest some kind of damage reduction or damage absorption. Alternatively, give some dodge/avoidance.
Undo the change to Strength. In fact, go back to the original hold system. Strength should provide resistance to physical holds/knockback/knockup and ego should provide resistance to intangible holds/knockback/knockup. This system worked FINE.
For the Telekenesis power, if no object is found to throw, make the power create an average sized object from the user's mind and throw this at the enemy.
Mind Link doesn't like the new TK powers and doesn't treat them as Mentalist for purposes of unlocking.
In other news, yes I did attempt to put Mind Link in my build and no my brain is not bugged.
Suggestion:
Make Mental Discipline all Ego damage not just melee Ego.
Put 3 (maybe 4) point adv on TK (the power) called Hammerspace which creates an object from the largest size catagory you can throw. Ala being able to lift size 4 stuff with this power and advantage would mean instead of throwing whats near by you create a random size 4 object and throw that.
When disassembling at the crafting table, I will occasionally be stopped with a "You do not have enough inventory space to complete this experiment" error even though I do, in fact, have more than enough space. It seems random as to what items cannot be disassembled at any one time--I'm stopped at breaking down one item, then a minute later I can break it down just fine.
I still think there is a need for 1 more power especially AoE T2 maintain something like a rain of sword.
There is pretty solid Single target power but somehow the lack of defense for passive + the lack of solid AoE make it difficult for levelling.
* Creating a new character and skipping tutorial makes you end up as level 1 in MC.
* The game seems to think that my "inventory is full", so I cannot hand in any missions with gear rewards. I can pick up drops fine.
* After leveling up to 18, I cannot take TK Lance, despite it's requirements being "5 powers from Telekinesis" and me having TK Burst, TK Assault, TK, Ego Form, Ego Reverberation - all of which are tagged as Telekinesis. I COULD take it when I had Ego Blade instead of TK Burst, so maybe TK Burst isn't correctly tagged?
* TK Assault has the same issue as Force's Crushing Wave; sometimes the animation doesn't play.
And an observation:
I LOVE the redone Telekinesis power. It's exactly what I wanted, thanks devs! One keypress to pick up and throw stuff is GREAT!
I just looked at my Munitions Char with 236 Dex and 106 Ego
On PTS she has now only 25,7 crit chance and 60,6 severity
On live its 30,3 chance and 54,5 severity
Loosing nearly 5% crit chance is not really nice .. the more severity doesn't even that
TK Assault- its just a weaker version of Lightning Arc, damage might be similar but, it doesn't work well with Ego Leech enough to be sustained, its not worth it without the advantage.
TK Burst- the skill is decent for a tier 1 skill but for the only ranged AoE it still lacks some OOMPF.
TK Lance- Disappointing skill, specially if its a full range TK build.
---Firstly fix the animation, make it either like a beam fired from whichever part of the body, or during the charge a big lance is created and then fired, maybe with a nice explosive SFX.
---Next the damage, if this is going to be a skill that consumes all your Ego Leech and be the main T3 ranged power, it needs to have damage to compare to EBB in exchange for longer charge up time. Or it should keep the same amount of damage for higher tap damage and maybe a decent multiple of that for charged, but it leaves the Ego Leech intact, the stacks just scale the damage.
TK changes-
Ego Blade Anhialation- is too weak compared to EBB if its going to consume all the Ego Leech stacks, you can just hit harder and better with EBB taps.
TK Eruption- The skill is now just useful for the buff from it, maybe improve the damage slightly.
TK Maelstrom- This skill is actually pretty handy now but not for the low damage it provides but for the tap action, just one tap and instant Ego Leech. So either make it a chance to gain Ego Leech and some Higher damage for fully charged.
----An advantage for it to maintain as some whirling rocks around you wouldn't be bad, adding defense for sometime, and slight damage reflection for enemies attacking at melee range.
Stat changes-
I shall not comment on STR.
DEX: Are you kidding me ? The change will kill hundreds of builds out there. Combos of DEX/STR, DEX/INT will be majorly nerfed. People will have to waste room for gear that could have gone else where on EGO, just to balance the loss in Crit chance. Lock N Load will be a compulsory addition which will make ranged characters sad since Two Smoking Barrels won't work.
EGO: Changes are decent but the attempt to balance it with DEX is pointless. Drop the increase in Crit chance and just make it boost Severity and slight increase in damage. For balancing issues perhaps a small bonus to Dodge Chance or Damage absorption when paired with Ego Form ?
30% is not optimal. The soft cap kicks in at 32%. My level 27 toon hits that softcap with 148. Your level 31 has 149 which means you are below the softcap, and hence, below optimal.
No. My numbers showed a noticeable drop in crit chance on the quarry toon. And as I pointed out, that's a double hit for a toon that is now going to do less damage from fewer criticals, and less damage from having less energy return.
But looking at DEX/EGO and DEX/INT Quarry is looking at the best possible cases for the DEX nerf since they still both end up with decent levels of EGO fairly easily. Looking at my MA Tank:
Live:
DEX 259
CON 315
EGO 81
crit % 32.6
sev % 47.1
PTS:
crit %26.7
sev %56.6
The dex nerf means that instead of proc'ing tempest and getting energy on about 1/3 of hits, he's down to about 1/4 of hits. That in turn lowers his DPS because the energy return on focus for this toon is 36 when it procs.
It also takes this toon longer now to get to 8 stacks of focus which makes for a 3rd hit on the DPS.
If this stat change goes live, there will be DEX/EGO and DEX/INT quarry. Most everyone else will eventually realize that using half of a tied pair of stats is gimping their character.
I keep giving you numbers that show a noticeable effect from not tying DEX to EGO. Just because you want to call it negligible doesn't make the effect go away.
Tying two stats together means less variety. It gets us farther from the "be the hero you want to be" slogan. So while I have no doubt that you're right that the point was to tie the two of them together, my argument is that such a decision is a poor one.
I believe every stat should be useful in and of itself. I shouldn't have to take EGO if I want DEX any more than I should have to take DEX if I want EGO. I mean, if I want CON, I don't have to take STR. If I want INT, I don't have to take PRE. Why should these two stats now be stuck as requirements for the other?
Oh, and the 400-100 thing...
If someone has 400 CON and 100 STR, they average 250.
If someone else has 300 CON and 200 STR, they average 250.
If a third someone has 250 CON and 250 STR, they average 250.
So ya, why did they need to rebalance their stats?
What the passive change did was freed slotted passives from being tied to specific superstats (with one exception). It INCREASED the variety of toons in the game. This in turn helped with that whole "be the hero you want to be" thing.
p.s. That one exception is Defiance which not only isn't itself tied to superstats, it also (obviously) doesn't average superstats. All it does it gives the Defiant buff. Defiant is CON only. So the passive change had no noticeable effect on a 400 CON Defiance toon because it had no effect on any Defiance toon.
With my dex/int AOPM characters
PTS
dex : 323 crit chance : 32.4
ego : 103 crit sev : 63.7
Live
PTS
dex : 346 crit chance : 39
ego : 119 crit sev : 57.3
I'll lose 7% crit chance for a gain of 7% in severity. I hope the numbers will be reworked a little before this is pushed to live.
On the other hand, maybe forgetting ego altogether and focusing on dex + energy management stat will proove easier for most builds.
My other comments :
The lightning arc ego clone sound nice, a bit less damage for less energy cost. Plus the advantage to make it AoE will make it interesting.
For the Ego toggle, once again why only melee damage buff. It would have been interesting to have a new way to increase ranged damage since TK is a mixed set. And all new powers added (beside this one) are ranged. This somewhat puzzle me.
The whole concept on managing ego leech and using it for energy management and burst damage is interesting. I'll have to test it later on.
- None of the new powers are unlocking the higher tiers. This is a bad thing.
- TK Lance : Underwhelming. It's Defile in the TK set, but without any of the awesome. Consuming your buffs to deal more damage is not a good idea. A flat increase depending on how many Ego Leech stacks you have, that'd be better. This needs a new graphic, big time.
- Telekinetic Burst : In theory it's a good power. Seems a bit underpowered. For the love of Ceiling Cat, please stop tying in blade graphics to TK. Unless your character's name is Psylock, Syelok or Sighloc, it's not appropriate to a TK theme.
- Telekinetic Assault : Cool idea, horrible graphic. With orange tint, it looks like my TK character is frickin Jubilee, and NO ONE wants to be Jubilee. Someone earlier mentioned using the Telekinetic Darts for the assault, and that's slightly more appropriate. The rock bits flying around and such also seem wrong.
- Telekinetic Wave : This was always a great power and now it's even better. Love it.
- Telekinetic Maelstrom : Wow, I can actually fully charge it up now! The damage is still subpar, mostly because it's STILL not Ego damage. It needs a shot of steroids right into the BOOM gland. Great for building up Ego Leech stacks, but that should not be it's only use.
- Mental Discipline : Not good enough, it should increase ranged damage as well as melee. It's also massively, incredibly squishy. Perhaps a flat, smallish damage mitigation component ala IDF or Invulnerability (although no where near on that scale).
Despite my complaints, you guys are definitely on the right track, but you're a long way from being done.
EDIT! I also noted that almost none of these powers have the option to change origin location. That's a disservice to those who want to use TK from their BRAIN.
Along those lines...
TK is definitely now a ranged/melee hybrid set. Unfortunately, that doesn't allow it to use both types of attacks optimally in offensive roles since avenger doesn't buff melee and brawler flat out nerfs ranged.
Maybe we should let avenger buff melee damage and just get rid of brawler altogether
The only reason SS DEX with EGO as a geared stat works on live is because the scaling on EGO is totally broken, making SS EGO just a waste of time. It is very heavily front-loaded. You get 50% sev with only around an 80-something investment. 120 gets you up around 60%, and 200 (i.e. superstat level) is 75%. 120 is about what you can get in an 'off' stat with a solid focus on gear. It just is not worth SSing EGO to go from 60-75% severity, particularly since a lot of crit's benefit is in other powers that already trigger just by the act of critting. These changes do not decouple DEX and EGO nor do they make EGO at all desirable as a standalone. All they really do is nerf DEX.
Look, some people say "DEX/crits - overpowered!" and probably don't mind a nerf. Except it isn't so. Similarly, several people mentioned how Archery and Munitions need crits to 'make up their poor damage'. Ok, except good ranged sets can use crits too. Poor sets isn't why DEX/crits is not broken. The main reason is that crits force you to heavily stat DEX and EGO. That means you can't fit in STR/CON realistically. So crits are really competing with the damage increase of Enrage. Only a good AoPM build can have the stats to pull off meaningful crits and meaningful levels of Enrage in the same build (and I've seen several AoPM 'build comparisons' that sell it far short damage-wise by not taking full advantage of this ability.) Such builds are usually range's desperate attempts to try to compete with the ridiculous damage boosts melee builds have.
You see, both focus and enrage give a huge damage strength buff. Each then also pairs with a second lesser buff. These lesser buffs are crits paired with focus, and the aggressor-style toggles paired with enrage. The current values of crits don't even quite compete with the toggles, i.e. DEX is not really overpowered. Focus/crits is even more OP than Enrage/toggle only because focus itself is ridiculous beyond compare, but that is a separate issue. Poor ranged builds can get either crits or enrage, and enrage simply does more damage. 'Course Enrage is a lot less convenient for ranged builds because no ranged attacks stack it up so you have the tedious and slow 'click Enrage 8 times over a couple minutes' and scream bloody murder when the unskippable cutscene resets it on you. Or skip an offensive passive and just take Defiance. All the melee builds using enrage build it just in the act of attacking - everyone who doesn't have these attacks is going Focus, the uber option that ranged builds just don't have. For ranged builds, crits vs enrage is really always-on for lesser damage vs pain in the butt but for better damage.
So, the last thing ranged builds need is to have their SS DEX + minor in EGO option nerfed even more, forcing SS EGO as well on them at the expense of an energy-management SS. Even for melee builds, crits are not the part that is overpowered - focus is. DEX is fine and has a standalone benefit, it gives chance to crit. Sure you need EGO to make the damage portion work, but you get that standalone benefit of triggering every in-game ability that happens when you crit. It also happens to scale Dragon's Wrath and focus, but that isn't DEX being overpowered, it is those abilities being so.
EGO needs the same. Currently, it has the half where it combos with DEX. What it needs is some other, standalone ability. In theory it has energy via blocking. In practice, if you run in protector, it doesn't matter what your EGO is - block and you have a full bar. If you are not in protector, again it doesn't matter because it is not enough energy income to block instead of energy building. Whatever EGO gets, it needs to be big, and it needs to compete with the what good Superstats give you. Namely, touch the core things you do every single fight. You build energy, you deal damage, you take damage, and you do this by activating powers which cost energy. Anything else is niche. Hold resist? Sure, if it worked, it'd be a nice extra. But will it compete with making all your self-heals do more healing? Will it compete with reducing the energy costs of all your powers and using those very powerful abilities with cooldowns more often? Will it compete with all the on-crit effects and scaling majorly OP powers like Focus and Dragon's Wrath? This is the sort of benefit EGO needs if it is to ever be worth a precious SS slot.
---
REC and END are tied together much like DEX/EGO. Part of REC's big function is to increase your equilibrium, by a straight point-for-point increase. If you don't have the END to cover the extra points, it is lost. Adding 1/10th of those points back in is better, but just slightly. You still lose a lot of REC's function by taking it as a SS without END. And you don't generally take them both together anyway because the game has much better ways to recover energy than by blowing one of your precious superstats on REC, particularly once you already have END as a SS.
Why is REC so inferior? It basically is a mirror of INT, in a way - REC means your energy building increases, INT means that energy does more for you. It would be in parity, if the numbers were right, if every energy building mechanism in the game scaled on REC and only REC. You know, except that INT is also reducing cooldowns for you. But there is no parity. Too much energy returns in the game scale on something other than REC. The recent 'we'll add REC to these power's scaling too' doesn't help - just rubs in that you could take REC, or you could take the other stat and get additional benefit as well.
The fact that MSA scales on INT is particularly kicking REC while it is down. But thermal reverberation is a second major culprit since it scales on PRE. And since it is basically twice as good as any other energy unlock due to the fact that it gives you energy bursts twice per the three seconds (once for a guy on fire, once for you standing in the fire.) Only telepathic reverberation, on crowds, is comparable and oh look! Another one that scales on PRE. Plus then there is Dark Transfusion which kind of sort of 'scales' on CON. Not really, but using it with abandon is sure a lot safer with lots of hit points to back it up. All of these options (and a few others) are miles better than taking REC and gutting your damage by relying on your energy builder.
But even if you wanted to fix that by moving all those unlocks to REC, it would just be a nerf. Energy unlocks scaling on other stats means you get your energy PLUS the benefit of the other stat. Moving to REC would mean you just get the energy. *Maybe* if REC worked with every single energy unlock and gave you twice the benefit the other stat gave you? Exclusively, I mean, such that the energy returned is the best of REC or the other stat. In other words, if all it did was energy but so much more than the other stats? And this is an exclusive benefit of SSing it since REC as a secondary stat would give you about the same energy as the 'other' stat as a SS and they don't stack? Something like that might work. You can always find a use for more energy. Well, at least if you are a ranged character - the low costs and ridiculous boosts like Focus granting energy and the rush buff once again makes melee laugh at the hoops ranged builds are going through to try to get the damage to win those open missions.
---
Now for the attacks. I only looked at the ranged ones, hoping to get a decent ranged set out of it. If you haven't figured it out, I much prefer ranged builds. Melee is just too easy, too much an "I win" button. But nope, it doesn't stack up. Not even for melee really. The toggle is in a set that more or less is forced into a crit-based build. So that mean your only real option is a crit + toggle build. Since both crits and the toggle give about the same increase and that increase is noticeably less than either focus or enrage, this combo is flat-out inferior to either crit + focus or toggle + enrage. And just to rub it in to ranged builds, even that is melee only.
Now for the ranged attacks themselves. It looks like the intent is to full maintain Assault, then 'burst' the stacks of ego leech you get with Lance. I tried that. The damage is poor.
First, Assault is just a bad power. I know it is tier 0, but LA is tier 0 and it is darn good. Just when it looks like the "we must stick it to ranged sets" mantra was loosing its grip, it roars back with a vengeance. Assault does less damage than Lightning Arc, doesn't have LA's accelerated increasing, and lacks the major +20% raw damage LA gets when the enemy has negative ions on it.
Second, Lance requires stacks of Ego Leech to do competitive damage. Popping a 5-stack of Ego Leech *is* good. But even with its bonus to regaining stacks, it is not enough for even a full maintain of Assault to gain back the stacks. But even if it was, 1.5 seconds of good damage does not make up for having to channel 4.5 seconds of bad damage.
AND to top it all off, you need to take and advantage out two single-target attacks to do your subpar damage. In the end, you just say, "Why am I not just going with Lightning Arc or Defile again?"
The toggle at rank 3 is 21% damage which is almost exactly the 20% Lightning Arc gets for negative ions. If you make the toggle apply to ranged damage, now it is much more palatable. The next thing you need to do is boost the chance to stack Ego Leech while under Lance's bonus such that a full maintain will basically always net you five stacks. Then the damage will be much more competitive. Because it requires two powers and because it is a slow combo that only really matters on SuperVillains on up (other stuff dies too fast), hopefully the damage is better than just Lightning Arcing it over and over. You'd have to tweak some more numbers, but the set would at least have a clear 'schtick'.
As it stands now, too many ranged sets are left in the cold because their damage is just horrid. Don't make this another, especially *after* its review. Fire has the ridiculous Unstable/Conflag/Firesnake combo to be very competitive. Defile has the melee-like aspect toggle to boosts its damage, plus its self resist debuff. Lightning Arc has flat-out good numbers plus the huge boost from Negative Ions and awesome energy efficiency with Ionic. Most of the other ranged sets have... bad damage. 'Course even these "good" ranged sets still don't hold a candle to the Dragon Wrath spam and its ilk, but at least they aren't embarrassed. Not completely. Not like a set like Archery or Munitions is.
Let's make Telekinesis not just another Archery or Munitions please.
Edit: I also think the stat changes might not be as bad folks make them out to be, I can see where the Devs were coming from, and I think their intention was the opposite of being perceived, in an attempt to make them stand alone stats. A few quick tests with KI/HI unlocks with a subpar Dex/Int build (163 dex/ 208 Int/ 53 Ego), I was still crit'ing enough to proc the unlocks every 4 seconds.
Again, believe whatever you want. But the consensus of forumites who test this stuff to oblivion all disagree with you. Again, maybe if you're an OCD min/maxer, but honestly, I'm not that anal retentive. Optimal != maxed. I'd post the chart that shows the "optimal" values by level, but honestly I don't see the point.
And as I pointed out, the difference in extra damage from crits is less than 2%, which is perfectly in line with my results. I also pointed out that it's statistically unlikely that anyone is going to notice a difference in energy due to a 5% loss of crit due to the way the energy unlocks work. Hey, here's an idea, why don't you actually play test the changes instead of DOOM mongering? I know proclaiming the end of the world is a lot easier, but it's not particularly helpful, especially when the math is not on your side.
Sounds like it on paper, but it just doesn't seem to bear out that way in practice. Why don't you go try it instead of complaining about it with absolutely no proof?
I call it negligible cause IT IS. If it has little to no perceivable impact on gameplay what else would you call it? Oh yeah, that's right, you haven't PLAYED it to know for sure.
Dunno, you'll have to ask the devs. I'm not a mind-reader. Clearly they have a purpose in mind for rebalancing the crit/severity mechanic. And no one is forcing you to take anything you don't want. Just because certain combinations work better together doesn't mean you MUST go that way if you don't want to. There are always choices. I know that's difficult for a cherry-picking min/maxer to understand, but TRY.
Prior to the change in passives you could rely on only ONE superstat. So you could pump up CON to 400 and leave STR at 100, and the game calculated you at 400. After the change that was no longer true; you had to make an effort to pump up BOTH superstats because now they were averaged, and even after doing so you still would come out less than you had before. And yet life went on.
It's funny you mention that, because at the time I clearly recall the same amount of whining and ranting and DOOOM calling as I'm seeing here. "Oh no, if you do this all my characters will be broken beyond repair!". "Oh no, the whole game is going to collapse in on itself!" "For the love of God WHY are you doing this to us, every single one of my characters will be UNPLAYABLE!!!" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I even remember a lot of people going on and on about how the changes will lead to everyone going DEX/EGO for everything, since all other choices were going to be gimped in comparison. Yeah, that didn't happen either.
Kinda like "oh no! I'm losing 5% of my crits, so I'm getting double-triple super secret nerfed, cause I'm doing SO much less damage [proved to be not true], my energy recovery is a joke [statistically unlikely] and DOOOOM! it's gonna take me forever to build full stacks of focus [where "forever" = less than an extra second?]"
After awhile you all start to sound like the adults in Charlie Brown. And I know when it gets to that point it's time for me to duck out. Y'all are now free to wallow in your DOOOM mongering self-pity without anyone like me trying to spoil your fun. Carry on.
Also as others have stated this hurts characters who are statting anything other than Dex/Ego since these changes have made the two stats very much reliant on one another (instead of Ego being reliant on Dex) which hurts Dex/anything-that-is-not-Ego Toons.
It was brought up during discussions about potential changes to improve EGO: Critical hit chance is much more powerful than critical hit severity. The latter is dependent on the former. In a vacuum, gluing DEX/EGO makes a small shuffle on the ratio of chance:severity. The damage output would be more or less the same in the long run. However, there are nice powers that reward getting a critical hit without a care to severity. This is present in many games besides CO as well. So nice that people give them consideration and will try to work them into their characters. This has allowed DEX (due to it influencing critical chance) to be flourish without caring for EGO. There are many characters that run with some combination of Form of the Tempest, Killer Instinct, and Hunter's Instinct (the last one is theoretical; HI is in need of a practicality overhaul). This case is where the DEX/EGO blur matters. Unfortunately, this case has become some ubiquitous that almost anyone who has a remotely decent critical hit chance will have at least one of those powers. These may or may not be fixed with providing secondary energy unlocks for more frameworks and by having powers that reward or scale off critical severity while ignoring critical hit chance. Although honestly, Form of the Tempest (and likewise Molecular Self-Assembly) is very universal and probably won't lose their competitiveness anytime soon. People may whine about slowed energy return, but the lack of good alternate options means people will mostly stick with it. Were there other energy return options, people would be slightly peeved that their bonus energy return was weakened. But right now... it and MSA are the most universal options at the moment. Also, mixing DEX/EGO like so makes them more interdependent and not less.
TL;DR version: Part of problem of the DEX/EGO fusion is due to powers rewarding crit chance and ignoring crit severity, the other part is due to lack of energy return options. This has made too many people depend on it. Even if it didn't butt-hurt the masses' dependency on such powers, fusing the two stats cheapens both of them in terms of uniqueness and ability to stand alone.
What EGO needs is a something significant attached to it. Let's see the stats offer right now...
STR - Knock resistance, melee knock power, melee damage bonus
DEX - Critical hit chance
REC - Equilibrium
CON - Max hit points with no diminishing returns
PRE - Threat management, healing bonus, and passive support bonus on allies (except IDF)
INT - Cooldown and energy cost reduction
EGO - Hold resistance, ranged knock power, critical severity, energy returned on block
END - Max energy points with no diminishing returns
EGO needs something big. It has a bunch of little things going for it, but nothing major to make someone focus on EGO without focusing on DEX as well. Hold resistance, while much welcomed, isn't big due to its situational worth. It doesn't have to end up rivaling DEX in anyway. DEX will probably still remain one of the best stats in the game. EGO just needs something strong and universal not tied down to DEX. I'd suggest something like modify duration of buffs/debuffs but I don't feel it's universal enough. Could be useful for controllers, buffers, and debuffers... but in a general sense? Not really.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Take any passive besides Ego Form (or no passive at all)
2) Take Mental Discipline and it's ZPA
3) Enter combat
4) ID Blades fails to proc.
I don't know who you are, but you speak great wisdom in these paragraphs especially.
I find these ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your kool-aid. Er, newsletter.
I don't know offhand but in my opinion, Ego doesn't need to be splitting Dexs' crit chance off, it needs to share in End and Rec as an Energy stat. The more I think about it, the more I come to believe that the one thing Dex-Ego builds lack [barring Focus and Rush which change things for some melee] is energy management.
Plus, Rec is in a way located in the wrong gear slots. End and Int are both Utility gear stats, but Recovery is Offense? Why exactly? This just means a player can effectively "tripple stack" by super statting End and Int, and gearing for rec for ridiculous energy management, only needed on a very few builds. Some would even argue those few builds aren't even top performers. No dex or ego for crits, no str for Rage buff, no con or pre for survivability after all.
I'm not sure what Ego really needs, but by making ego a hodge-podge of many little effects, you run the risk of making it too good or necessary to too many builds, or you make it end up over nerfing the other stats to make Ego look better, which is what has happened to Dex as far as I can tell.
Even if ego needs a few small 'bonuses' like scaling energy return on blocking, it also needs to have it's one big thing, that no other stat does at all, something useful to many builds and not just one style of build.
Currently, Crit effectiveness is too front loaded to serve in this capacity.
Don't need a chart. 32% was stated by the devs way back when as the point where diminishing returns kick in.
And as I've tried to point out repeatedly...it's not just 2%. It's a hit to Tempest which builds stacks slower and get fewer energy returns from crits. It's a hit to munitions and archery which get lower energy return.
Also, going from 1/3 crit chance to 1/4 crit chance is not "a 5% loss of crit".
Last, I did test on my MA tank, my dex/ego muni toon, and my dex/int quarry toon. I always test. Guess what happened?
On my dex/ego toon, not much of anything. In fact, once I factor in his entire build which includes arcane circle, I could care less about the stat change since muni's energy return was never enough for him anyway.
On my dex/int archery toon, slight hit in damage on fewer criticals. However, the loss of energy was negligible because she never runs out of energy anyway.
My MA tank gets nerfed. It took longer to build up to 8 stacks of focus which meant lower DPS. Energy return was slower which meant more running the energy builder which mean lower DPS. Critical hits happened less often which meant lower DPS.
It was totally shocking how that all worked out.
See above.
*rolls eyes*
Cherry picking min/maxer? I kinda like that. Doesn't fit, but it's cute.
You're going to have to explain this point better since it makes no sense. I already pointed out you can still go 400 CON and get the full benefit of 400 points into defiance since defiance didn't change. It was kinda the only passive that did that before the change, and it still is.
For example, regen used to be REC/CON. You needed both to get full benefit of what regen does. Not that very many people did that because taking a slightly weaker regen to get a superstat other than REC was just too tempting. Now, you don't even have to take a slightly weaker regen. In other words, reality is exactly the opposite of what you claim. You don't have to focus on both superstats since you can get to the same place just by really maxxing out one (which is why I pointed out that 400 - 100, 300-200, and 250-250 all get you to the same place...notice how 400 doesn't hurt and spreading out 250-250 doesn't help in averages?)
I remember the DEX/EGO bit...but not the doom part. In fact, I remember a lot of people really liking the idea of added flexibility in builds. Now, there were a few people irritated that it'd make it easier to min/max build toons (which it did), but no one claimed it was going to nerf characters (how would that possibly have worked) and definitely no doom.
Nothing secret about it, and it's a lot more than 5%. I'm also not crying doom. In fact, my biggest complaint is tying two stats together which reduces build flexibility, and hence toon variety.
Going back to my MA tank. If the devs leave stats exactly the way they are, I'll just tweak him. He'll go STR/CON enrage bestial, and I'll switch out his limited ego for some limited int to push MSA. It'll take me 5 minutes to make the change, and I suspect I'll actually get more benefit from that build than I do from MA-dex.
Only reason I haven't done it before is I really hate how the bestial aspect looks, and I consider appearance and theme more important than squeezing every last drop of damage out of a build. But I'm pretty sure I can make a new costume to hide the ugly aura and/or convince the devs to just turn it completely off (like they did to the ego form now)
40th level, 53 Dex, 201 Ego
LIVE:
3.4% crit chance (3.4% from Dex, 0% from Ego)
74.4% crit severity (0% from Dex, 74.4% from Ego)
Effective DPS Increase of +2.53% damage from crits
TEST:
10.0% crit chance (3.8% from Dex, 6.2% from Ego)
68.7% crit severity (4.2% from Dex, 64.5% from Ego)
Effective DPS Increase of +6.87% damage from crits
Ok, the big surprise here is that a low Dex contributed MORE crit chance on Test than it does currently on Live...
Does anyone have a 200 Dex, 200 Ego character on Live and Test who can chart the change at 'equilibreum'?
Without digging too deep into the nuances of optimization, I will mention that the gear itself has dimishing returns on high numbers in a single stat. Items with a peak bonus of 70 have 6-8 fewer total points than items with a peak bonus of 60. Giving up that last 2% (30% vs. 32%) can give you a net gain of 30-40 points overall, and if those are going into weaker stats the curves may reward those extra points quite heavily.
In other words I don't think ithere is really a one true way to be found anywhere in the 30-32% range - its too sensitive to how you leverage your other stats. I try to shoot for 200-220 myself. There is just no profit in picking a fight with dimishing returns
Scaled algo gear kinda sorta fixes that. Elite scaled algo gear totally fixes it. It is a pain getting the right gear since algo is pretty much a random grab bag of what it'll throw together, and even with all my toons, I prolly toss 90% of what I get onto the AH or into crafting mats because I can't use it.
Needless to say, I'm kinda hoping the acclaim gear pass gives us good stuff at reasonable costs so that I can go pick exactly what I want rather than hoping I win the lottery 9 times per toon.
Which is sort of a bad sign since it tops my list as single stupidest thing they ever did in this game. I'm eternally grateful that person doesn't work here anymore.
I'm the oddball again - I run 7 purples, one algo blue and a really odd reward blue from Nemcon. Not becaue I haven't had the time to get any algo I want, but because for my particular mechanical abuse, the defense values from purples are more desirable than the algo stat bonus :rolleyes:.
I'd like to see more worthwhile Purples in general. The Appocalypse ones were insulting. Purple (ab)users haven't had anything to look forward to basically since launch. That's kinda jacked up as itemization schemes go.
REC does need a boost. It's considered offense due to alpha-strike potential. With enough, you can open with Torrent of Arrows, Gigabolt, Force Cascade, or whatever. And keep on going longer (and hoping your energy returns will start kicking in if enemies are still standing). But it lacks the permanence of STR and DEX. REC loses its advantage after you've cleaned out your starting energy and your energy returns fail to keep up. Someone can argue that a nice opening can make a lasting difference later on, but this is less true with bosses and whatever few sufficiently long non-boss engagements. Also, opening with a hit of Dark Transfusion sort of renders REC obsolete, especially if you have high END. I think it could work as a boost to energy regeneration until equilibrium. I originally though energy decay reduction could be placed in REC as well, but I now think that END could take it.
So out of 3 toons tested only 1 was adversely affected, and by a margin you failed to quantify in any way. So yeah dude, I'm totally [un]impressed. You really got me there. See folks, irrefutable proof that this change will completely and totally destroy all your characters! Silly me with my logic, reasoning, and math. It simply can't hold a candle to blind speculation.
Yeah, this has gotten old.
Now, all this means is that I lose globals when I shift my stats from strength to ego. Other than that my character and the way I play him doesn't change. But the crit changes to Ego don't make it viable as a secondary stat when it comes to crits. The scaling on crit chance is just way too steep to be anything but superstat territory.
So while force characters who (like me) aren't superstatted for knockback will probably want to gear for Ego like Ame said, it's not going to be anything to write home about.
-edit-
What is algo gear?
EGO Form:
This passive is a range/melee hybrid passive and so the ratio of defensive to offensive buff on this power has to be comparable to Quarry to be acceptable. Quarry should be the standard for ranged melee hybrid performance
Suggestion:
a. The obvious choice is to make ego form a quarry clone by giving it a chance to dodge. Its not very original but you cant go wrong with it.
b. Add a pulsing PBAOE sleep affect around the ego form user when ever he uses a melee attack for his protection. This would be a unique way to add survivability when surrounded in melee range, reinforce synergy within the mentalist set and it keeps ego form users from being too defensively potent.
TK lance:
TK Lance needs a secondary affect that makes it useful for ranged melee hybrids. for example, Ebon ruin can be advantaged as a resist debuff on top of the heal debuff making it useful even to brawler toons as a ranged single target debuff.
Suggestion:
I would be interested to see TK Lance fill the niche of the best heavy hitter for kiting.
a. Remove the self root from tk lance so that it can be used on the move like ego hold. This would make the power very useful for ranged melee hybrids that want an attack that they can do good damage with and move between range and melee smoothly. This would also give it a niche for ranged TK users as the best melee kiters
b. Add a root and/or snare to TK lance to that you can use it to do dps and dictate the pace/range of the fight. this would still be helpful to range/melee hybrids and help ranged TK users kite.
Ego Blade Annihilation:
This power was better for ranged melee hybrids before because it allowed you to deal damage at range and then pick off vulnerable targets with a quick melee burst when their hp is low. now its just a less attractive version of Ego Blade Breach
Suggestion:
a. Return Ego Blade Annihilation to how it was before, not many people seem to like the new version any way. With TKs new ranged ability, the old EBA now has a use as a situational melee power for ranged/melee hybrids.
b. Do some other thing that will give EBA a use for people that are not completely melee.
c. Please consider folding EBAs damage into one single hit. Splitting damage in 2 makes it less effective against resistant foes (the ones you are most likely to use it on).
Also, the animation for the power does not reflect 2 hits.
Mental Discipline:
Again, in a hybrid set this power should buff ranged and melee damage. As a melee only power this is inferior to all other forms especially the MA forms.
Suggestion:
Make Mental Discipline buff all TK damage.