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.
Where did I ever once say destroy every toon? I'm pretty sure nerfing DEX is going to have zero impact on STR/CON might toons.
I only tested three flavors of DEX toon because the third works as a proxy for every stat combo not involving EGO in some way. I mean, sure I could have tested DEX/INT non-quarry, DEX/PRE, DEX/STR, DEX/REC, and DEX/END along with DEX/CON, but they'd all come out exactly the same as DEX/CON did.
So no, it isn't only 1 out of 3. It's only 1 possible combo not effected and one other combo also requiring a specific passive getting a small effect. Every other combo is significantly affected.
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.
In my perfect MMO, the best gear would be stuff you earned by collecting specific tokens and then going and buying exactly what you want. So if I was designing things, UNITY, Nemesis, and Acclaim gear would all be the best. I'd also drastically lower the costs on all types of earned gear. You should be able to buy one piece of new gear every couple of "average" play sessions. Right now, it takes a week of hard grinding, or a month or more of normal play to get there.
Second up in quality are the cosmic drops. These are hard fights, and players deserver good rewards for them. Of course, I'm not thinking quite pheromone quality since I think that thing is a wee bit overpowered. But stat wise, better than crafted but not as good as earned give them time and difficulty invovled.
Next would come crafted gear. I suspect I'm not alone in wanting better crafting because one of the most common questions from new players is "Which crafting school is best for xxxxx?" I think we should be able to make level whatever gear with the stat combos we want that is almost , but not quite, as good as the earned gear. Now, the costs of crafting items would need to be increased from current levels so that the time investment for crafting is similiar to that of earned.
Fourth in line quality wise would be the scaled algo boss drops. They're harder to get than random mob drops, so should be better, but given how much faster it is to get at bosses, they shouldn't be as good as any of the previous categories.
Fifth is general mission rewards. I would leave some mission rewards as better than scaled algo for things like chains, but the rest should be about where they are now.
Last, we have random mob drops. These are mostly filler now until players get the time to get better, and they'd stay that way.
In my dream world, Nemesis and UNITY (And maybe PvP) gear would all be bought using the same type of tokens, so that I could vary what I do and still feel that I am progressing towards my goal! I just don't like doing similar things for a substantial amount of time (One reason that I have a lot of alts), so being able to alternate between Nemesis missions and UNITY missions and still be progressing at the same rate as if I was doing only one in its current state, would make it much more enjoyable for me to get good gear.
/derail
I love the new TK powers. They remind me of the Blades spell from Fable 2, and I loved that spell.
If Mental Dicipline would boost ranged Ego damage as well, I would be very happy, because Ranged TK would be a lot better in that case.
Also, the new TK is now my favourite power. I wouldn't mind if it doesn't work with no objects around, but since it takes a power pick it should be at least as easy to pick up heavy objects as it is with STR. Also, it seemed to me that it prioritized heavy objects in range in my limited testing, but if it doesn't, it really should.
[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.
That last bit actually got tested this morning using DEX/EGO.
Versus Form of the Tempest, Mental Discipline starts as a better damage buff. Now, once you get your 8 stacks of focus, Tempest does get very slightly better damage. However, by the time you get to that point, the mental discipline toon has a huge headstart in damage output that the tempest toon will not be able to make up before most fights are over.
So as a toggle for the melee side of TK, Mental Discipline is fine.
Now, were things fall apart is if you compare Mental Discipline ego blade-type attacks versus Tempest dragon's wrath or dragon's claws which just obliterate a TK toon in terms of damage output. It takes a while for ego blade breech to match up to a 9k dragon's wrath or 11k dragon's claw crit. And while the TK toon is playing catch-up for the first big hit, the MA toons are getting another and another...
That last bit actually got tested this morning using DEX/EGO.
Versus Form of the Tempest, Mental Discipline starts as a better damage buff. Now, once you get your 8 stacks of focus, Tempest does get very slightly better damage. However, by the time you get to that point, the mental discipline toon has a huge headstart in damage output that the tempest toon will not be able to make up before most fights are over.
So as a toggle for the melee side of TK, Mental Discipline is fine.
Now, were things fall apart is if you compare Mental Discipline ego blade-type attacks versus Tempest dragon's wrath or dragon's claws which just obliterate a TK toon in terms of damage output. It takes a while for ego blade breech to match up to a 9k dragon's wrath or 11k dragon's claw crit. And while the TK toon is playing catch-up for the first big hit, the MA toons are getting another and another...
Fair enough. I'm not a math dude so Ill take your word on that.
So are you saying that you would prefer to keep mental discipline as it as as apposed to making it buff ranged and melee damage?
Fair enough. I'm not a math dude so Ill take your word on that.
So are you saying that you would prefer to keep mental discipline as it as as apposed to making it buff ranged and melee damage?
Uh...no
I'm kinda a fan of set specific toggles as they reward people who stay within a set without making such builds required.
In the case of a hybrid set like TK, I think the toggle should buff both sides of it. I also think something needs to be done with the avenger/brawler problem the set will face for people who actually try to build hybrid.
Bigger pictures, munitions needs a toggle, all the elemental damages need toggles, magic needs a toggle, shadow needs a toggle...
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.
Fully agree on ego there.
Devs: please revert the changes to dex and ego then give ego some kind of enhanced energy mechanism.
Now, were things fall apart is if you compare Mental Discipline ego blade-type attacks versus Tempest dragon's wrath or dragon's claws which just obliterate a TK toon in terms of damage output. It takes a while for ego blade breech to match up to a 9k dragon's wrath or 11k dragon's claw crit. And while the TK toon is playing catch-up for the first big hit, the MA toons are getting another and another...
How do you reach 9k with Dragon's Wrath? My Dex/Int Quarry Dual Blades char has decent gear (Stats around 250 Dex, 215 Int, 150 Ego, 50 Str) and I've never seen anything above 6k, and that's pretty rare already. Most crits are in the high 4k or low 5k range. Am I doing something wrong? (Damage mostly observed on Freon on elite as I'm killing him a lot atm). Or is it because my fights while farming are most of the time to short to stack up 8 focus stacks?
Now onto the topic:
I agree with the poster who don't like the Dex/Ego changes. I'm levelign a Dex/Pre Fire character and my test build on the PTS got a significantly reduced crit change with only a small severity boost to compensate. And his crit change wasn't the greatest thing already since you need to put a lot of stats in energy management too.
TK Assault - Sword Missiles!? AWESOME <^_^> I love this power.
TK Burst - Swordsplosion? Also awesome! <^_^>
TK Lance - ... Incredibly disappointing. It looks, at least at present, like it just uses the same graphic as Defile. <;_;> I suspect this is a placeholder though. Right?
Mental Discipline - Need to test it more, but I like the idea behind it. Bonus crit works perfectly with my build too <'x'> Are you guys just following me around, trying to make me like you? >_>; ... it's working. *edit* Forgot to add: Even if you change the color on it, it still turns you pink when you finish charging it.
*double edit* Mental Discipline's ID Blades Zero Point Advantage does not seem to be working at present.
Obviously none of this tells you much about how well this stuff works; but visuals are crucial to me and thus the first thing I check.
Also, alt-tabbing from full-screen mode seems to cause crashes at present. I sent in a crash report about it. It doesn't seem to happen in Windowed Maximized mode though.
FIRST IMPRESSION REPORT (and also my first post in here after figuring out the friggin' Test Shard. Whee!)
Spent most of last night playing with the changes, getting a basic feel for how things worked now, seeing what was what. Largely...holy shagbawls TK patch. Heh...futzing with the entire set, but in a mostly beneficial way. Mostly.
The change to Ego scaling for melee TK attacks is something of an about damned time reaction. There was no reason whatsoever for Ego Blade users to have to jump through hoops to get what phys-melee got off Strength by default. That was part of the issue with Ego as a Superstat in my book, and one of the big reasons I never felt like bothering with a TK character. Good fix, will take. Even if it took too damn long.
I am still confused as to why Ego Blade Dash doesn't have a custom advantage like the other lunges. As it stands, there is no reason whatsoever beyond look to take EBD over Thunderbolt Lunge. They do the exact same thing, except Thunderbolt Lunge can be advantaged to stun as well as snare/root. Sure, it matters less to the PVP types who never take anything but Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground on their lunges, but the rest of us are kinda out in the cold here, Cryptic.
New TK powers/adjustments: -TK Assault is fun. Assault is a fine addition to the set. I know people are all offended that the TK set revolves around Psyloche/Green Lantern-style constructs rather than raw TK, but that's not really important. I have to say, I was really surprised to see Assault as a T0 power. Largely because it's good. I'm looking it over and the first thing to hit my brain is Damn, this looks like Lightning Arc... Increased crit chance scaling off Ego Leech is a fun addition, though I'm not sure yet if it truly competes with something like Lightning Arc's +20% off Negative Ions. 'Course, TK Assault's a T0 power, the fact that it's actually useful is already more than I normally ask of those. I really wish it didn't self-root, but again...c'est la vie. The advantage is good as well I had to sit there for a few moments thinking about it, which I don't normally do with advantages.
-TK Burst is entertaining. I really like the animation, and in my ranged TK tests, I actually found that it didn't feel redundant to TK Wave, which was my big concern. Giving it some measure of guaranteed Ego Leech generation is also a solid move the set's clearly focusing on building and dumping Leech now, which means one needs reliable ways to build Leech. The knockdown advantage is helpful and seems to fit thematically as well you generate an explosion and people fall over. I don't really have any complaints about it, it's a solid, viable T1
-TK Lance... Oh, TK Lance. I was so looking forward to discharging this giant TK spike of Death, only to find that it's neither a giant TK spike, nor very deathy for that matter. Reading the change in the update notes, I was thinking this was going to be some sort of rough TK analogue to Gigabolt or Force Cascade, a Doomblast that really took it out of the character. Instead, it's kind of an Itchy-Rash blast that really takes it out of the character. The tap damage is fine, the charge damage is bogus, especially when it eats all of your Ego Leech. The increased Leech generation based on consumption strikes me as awkward I can see that it's intended to make Ego Reverb more valuable, but really...you're going to gimp a T3 power to help an energy unlock? The advantage is the only reason to even think about bothering, and that's not nearly enough reason. More damage on charge, a stronger benefit for consuming Ego Leech, and for Bob's sake change the animation. This is TK LANCE, not TK Goo-Beam.
-Mental Discipline. Ugh. I want to like it, but I really can't. Form of the Tempest kicks it up and down the mountain for melee builds, and other builds...can't really use it. The increased crit chance is an interesting idea for a toggle form, but it's not enough extra crit chance ESPECIALLY in light of the stat changes I'ma get into later and the base damage increase is way too small for a set that really can't leverage Enrage without pulling some serious weirdness. And currently, two stacks of Focus in a normal (non-Primal Majesty) Dex build outdoes Mental Discipline's damage boost. One stack of Focus equals it in a Primal Majesty build. Bad Cryptic. Remove the melee restriction and up the scaling for crit chance it's crit chance, not raw damage, it can afford to scale 1-3 like Aggressor does, if not even higher.
-Ego Reverberation/Ego Leech: Sure. Focusing on improved costing rather than energy gain or whatever-else for Ego Leech works for me, kinda fits with what the rest of the set's been doing for a while. I think it's a little too hard to build Ego Leech up considering that the set's now equipped to cannibalize it, but the basic effect is fine. Heh...I ran tests with an INT/EGO character in the Powerhouse and had to stop for a moment. Intelligence and Ego...there's a combination I never thought'd see the light of day. Ego Reverb is a bit grumpy, given that Ego Leech isn't the most reliable buff in the world, but it's functional. This time, at least.
-Ego Form is still weak. My ranged TK builds ran Seraphim, my Blade tests ran AoPM. My Ego Form tests ended with me dead on the floor. It'd be nice to see this offer some form of defensive benefit like Quarry does. Perhaps scaling damage resistance based on stacks of Ego leech - ~4% resistance per stack sounds like it'd about fit to me, though I'd personally like to see it up around 5%. The damage also struck me as sub-par, which is a little awkward considering I know better, but it did. Adding scaling defense based on Ego Leech doesn't help people who want to take Ego Form without Ego attacks, but nobody does that anyways. For people who do take Ego Form, the defense benefit would be invaluable for Ego Blade characters.
-Ego Blade Annihilation is useful, but not as useful as it could be. I like the consumption mechanic, but it doesn't deal nearly enough extra damage without the advantage. The advantaged numbers should be the base numbers for the consumption effect given how important Ego Leech is to the set now, and the advantage should, perhaps, add +50% damage rather than double to try and keep it in line. As well, I think the attack needs to do a bit more to differentiate itself from Reaper's Embrace. Especially since the two share an animation. It'd be nice to see that Id Infusion-style buff thingus from TK Lance diffuse over to EBA, too. Giving the melee characters the same ability to temporarily increase their Ego Leech generation rate would help out a good deal, and it'd make when to charge one's EBA a more tactical choice, as well.
-Telekinesis is win. Hilarious, delicious win. I did laff when I punched it and watched giant boxes pick themselves up and sail through the air to slam into Purple Gang skulls of their own volition. Hee hee haww. That said...the overworld is definitely full of more tables and chairs than it is giant training weights. The skill is certainly better, but both the damage scaling and weight limits for it could use some work considering the random nature of its ammunition. It'll always be more for fluff and gigglesauce than a truly competitive damage dealer, and unlike many other posters, I think that's kinda where it should stick. The skill'd lose something if it didn't send random bits of terrain flying at your foes' heads. That said, it'd be nice if I could occasionally pick up garbage trucks, Titanic Weights, or Ted Kennedy and hurl them at my foe For Massive Damage.
And now, for the fun part...
-Dexterity/Ego Crit Futzing: No. Just no. I get that Ego as a Superstat was totally pointless without Dex before, and that's no good. I get that adding some measure of crit chance to Ego is an easy place to start fixing it, and I'm cool with easy solutions. When they work. THIS DOESN'T WORK. You guys are robbing Peter to pay Paul punishing Dex users in order to reward Ego users is just a chump move. I get that the increased severity Dex got from Ego is supposed to make up the DPS difference, and for all I know it very well might. It also causes a lot of problems for people who rely on crit chance for their Energy, which is basically everyone who has a Dexterity character. You're sabotaging the mechanics that Dex users have always relied on and not giving them any real benefit for it I get that Form of the Tempest is likely more ubiquitous than you like, but there's got to be a better way to fix that. Like...y'know, making other Forms more viable.
I've always thought that every Superstat in this game should be able to stand on its own, independently of the others. Ego shouldn't need to be an also-ran to Dex, and Recovery shouldn't need to be an also-ran to Endurance. Instead of working on a solution to make Ego stand up by itself, you guys are introducing a 'solution' which which knocks Dexterity down. Blargh.
Grah...I suppose it's not a huge deal for most builds most and it certainly does make Ego more attractive. To anyone but Marksman Archetypes and archers in general, who're gonna just sit down and cry when this goes live and they lose a third of their already limited energy generation. As soon as I figure out how to do it, I'ma be porting my mixed0-range Quarry character over to the test shard to run some tests with a properly configured and geared character, see how badly this change actually butthurts my energy. Regardless of all that though, intermingling Dex and Ego so that players feel forced to take both is just uncool. I shouldn't have to feel forced to do anything in this game, the creative freedom of the Freeform building system is why I went Gold in the freakin' first place. That's my gripe whatever the mechanics actually say, Cryptic is sorta standing behind me with a giant club with EGO written on it saying You took Dex as a Superstat? I really hope you know what your second Superstat choice is...
Find some other way to make Ego a stand-alone stat, please.
The way I am reading things and even testing them, if this goes live, I will be moving my Dex/Anything-other-than-Ego toons into some other stat combo. There will be little point to taking Dex without also taking Ego. This has even more firmly cemented the marriage between the two stats.
Edit: it also means that I will be rebuilding any toons that rely on criticals for either DPS or energy unless those toons use both Dex and Ego.
A little off topic but I thought the general consensus regarding zero-point advantages was that they were a bad idea for a multitude of reasons and a system involving drop-downs for reskinable powers Power UI would appear to take its place.
I take it since three new zero-point advantages are being added that it's not coming anytime soon?
Expulse (and Phoenix flight, which shares its animation) fails to play properly 99.99% of the time. The character floats up in the air for the charge-up, but the delivery animation fails to play - the character pops directly back to default stance.
NPCS killed by a knockback attack fly off... then yo-yo back to the point they were standing at when the attack occured. This is flat-out creepy looking.
random comment: Ego leech seems like a somewhat outdated term now...Nothing particularly leechy about its current application. Hardly a major issue, but I'd advocate a name change when time allows.
random comment: Ego leech seems like a somewhat outdated term now...Nothing particularly leechy about its current application. Hardly a major issue, but I'd advocate a name change when time allows.
There is a lot of... borderline hostility showing up in this thread, and it needs to stop. This is the test realm, it's here for us to test. If things don't work out the way we planned, we can change them. The stat changes are a big deal, and a lot of people are going to be very interested in them. Let's just all try to keep calm while we discuss them. Now then...
One of the main goals of sharing crit chance/severity between Ego and Dex is to make it so they do not rely on each other, and I believe that goal has been reached. On Live, Ego is completely dependent on Dexterity in order to provide any benefit at all - the only stat in the game to function this way. While Dex may provide a smaller chance to crit now, a 27% chance to crit is still a lot - more than 1 in 4 attacks will be critting, meaning with high speed attacks (say in the 0.67s activate range) you will still be critting on average once every 2.4 seconds, and those crits will be hitting even harder - 43% harder, instead of 16%.
With these changes, Ego is capable of standing without Dex - 10% crit chance and 80% Crit Severity is enough to matter, especially with the additional benefits Ego now provides.
I'm going to provide a handful of numbers that help illustrate how the Dex/Ego changes could affect you. Mind you, I am only referring to pure damage from crit at this point, as that is the only thing that matters on a pure stat basis. If a power that relies on critical hit chance has become weakened by this to a point where we are concerned, we can tweak that individual power - it is not a reason to not proceed with these stat changes. The feedback on those powers is still very welcome - if you feel a power (such as Form of the Tempest) is being negatively affected by these changes, that is definitely valuable feedback, and something we're already aware of and looking at. Also, these aren't necessarily the final numbers for the stat changes. We'll be looking at feedback here as well as doing lots of our own testing to figure out if the numbers are where we want them.
Anyhow, numbers.
First, here is the math to determine contribution to crit chance and crit severity. Previously, and on Live:
Crit Chance: determined by Dex + Critical Strike Rating, at equal values.
Crit Severity: determined by Ego + Critical Severity Rating, at equal values.
On PTS:
Crit Chance: determined by (Dex*0.7) + (Ego*0.3) + Critical Strike Rating
Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.8) + (Dex*0.2) + Critical Severity Rating
We examined many values for splitting the two of them up, and were happiest with this as our first pass. It's possible (perhaps even probable) that additional changes may still occur.
Say you have 300 Dex, and 10 Ego. On Live, your crit stats would be:
Crit Chance - 36%
Crit Severity - 16.6%
Total increase of ~6% damage.
The same stats, 300 Dex and 10 Ego, with the current PTS numbers provides:
Crit Chance - 27.6%
Crit Severity - 43.3%
Total increase of ~12% damage. This means the damage increase of just Dex has been roughly doubled.
Looking at the converse, you have 300 Ego and 10 Dex. On Live:
Crit Chance - 0.1%
Crit Severity - 90.8%
These 2 combined result in less than a 0.1% increase to your damage output.
300 Ego and 10 Dex on PTS:
Crit Chance - 9.9%
Crit Severity - 81.6%
Total increase of ~8% damage. The damage benefit from just Ego has been increased substantially.
Clearly, if you are gearing exclusively for one stat or the other, this change is a buff. Let's look at some mixed stats.
First, the easy one. If you have 250 Dex and 250 Ego, your stats will be:
Crit Chance - 31.7%
Crit Severity - 82.9%
And those numbers should be unchanged on PTS. If they are different, something has gone wrong.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, Live:
Crit Chance - 31.7%
Crit Severity - 52.4%
Total increase of ~16.6% damage.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, PTS:
Crit Chance - 26.6%
Crit Severity - 59.8%
Total increase of ~15.9% damage. A minor nerf, which we'd really prefer wasn't happening. Which is why we're still looking at the stat changes. This is right around the current worst case, but we'd like to make it so the worst case is a wash.
250 Ego, 100 Dex, Live:
Crit Chance - 10.4%
Crit Severity - 82.9%
Total increase of ~8.6% damage.
250 Ego, 100 Dex, PTS:
Crit Chance - 17.9%
Crit Severity - 77.8%
Total increase of ~13.9% damage. A sizable buff.
This helps illustrate what we're going for, and as stated before, if the reduction in crit chance causes interaction issues with powers that are based on the previous crit chance percentages, those powers can be adjusted.
And her are a couple of quick responses unrelated to Dex/Ego:
The TK Lance anim/FX are placeholder. I thought they made it in before the build, but what youa re all reporting (Pink Defile) is exactly what I setup as placeholder while the FX were being worked on.
Ego Blade Dash will be getting a custom advantage.
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.
Thanks for the heads up, probably a conflict with the same advantage being on Ego Form. We'll get it fixed.
And question for devs: Are knock-to powers like shuriken with adv, might lariat and infernal lariat considered a melle knock? Because if not you should change it, no point for all of them to be ego based, well, exept force one.
Knock To's do not benefit from Knock Strength at all - they are knocking to you, to a specific point, not an amount of distance that can be modified via a bonus percentage.
I was wondering, can Ego Form be availiable as a T1 power to the Telepathy set when the energy builder is chosen (i think HW can get defiance/unstoppable in this way)? I mean, telepathy is the same family and doesnt have a passive...
First, here is the math to determine contribution to crit chance and crit severity. Previously, and on Live:
Crit Chance: determined by Dex + Critical Strike Rating, at equal values.
Crit Severity: determined by Ego + Critical Severity Rating, at equal values.
On PTS:
Crit Chance: determined by (Dex*0.7) + (Ego*0.3) + Critical Strike Rating
Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.8) + (Dex*0.2) + Critical Severity Rating
So Dex goes down slighlty in utility (90% of previous rating) and Ego goes up (110%). I don't have a problem with this myself if only because Dex was kinda painfully obviously the power stat, the one everyone gravitates to includingthe Devs when picking stats for the archetypes. The fair argument being leveled against this is less about DPS and more about abilities that proc off of crits. Until you address that aspect expect the hue and cry to continue .
Do you have any thoughts on why I'm seeing characters with 53 Dex GAIN crit chance from Dex when comparing Live vs. Test? (Exact numbers reported in an earlier post in this thread.) Did the 'rating to percentage' curve ALSO get altered during this pass?
How do you reach 9k with Dragon's Wrath? My Dex/Int Quarry Dual Blades char has decent gear (Stats around 250 Dex, 215 Int, 150 Ego, 50 Str) and I've never seen anything above 6k, and that's pretty rare already. Most crits are in the high 4k or low 5k range. Am I doing something wrong? (Damage mostly observed on Freon on elite as I'm killing him a lot atm). Or is it because my fights while farming are most of the time to short to stack up 8 focus stacks?
First things first, when I say 9k dragon's wrath, I mean what can I build to if I push stats a bit beyond normal and focus on just that. Of course, I'm pretty sure I can get 10k wrath if I got really silly, I just never have, so I usually just use the 9k figure which I have done.
Stuff to look at
Your stats are solid, especially for a quarry build. But if you want to push damage on wrath, you need to get somewhere around 300 DEX, 300 EGO, everything else into STR.
Way of the Warrior buffs melee damage more than Quarry buffs physical. Quarry on the other hand is a good choice for sustained DPS or general flexibility in a build.
Next up, you didn't mention if you had an MA form or not. If not, that's a huge part of the problem as every stack of focus buffs your damage significantly based on DEX and STR. As an example, 250 DEX 50 STR is about 17% per stack, and you can get 8 stacks. Now if you were at 300 DEX and 150 STR...
Are you running in brawler or guardian? Quarry lends itself to hybrid ranged/melee so I have to ask.
Oh, the sneaky one...are you r3 dragon's wrath or r2 wrath + tiger's courage. Believe it or not, tiger's courage is actually the wrong choice except for a very narrow range of critical percentage. See, the damage buff from tiger's courage is already considered bonus damage and so does NOT get buffed by criticals. So what happens with TC is that your non-crit attacks get better all the time if you're above 20% critical chance, but most of the time (except for a very narrow range), your critical attacks get worse. Like I said, sneaky Cryptic math.
Anyway, just goofing on test, I turned my DEX/CON MA tank into a DEX/EGO brawler WotW with 50 STR, 297 DEX, 225 EGO. Not great stats since I forgot to grab my gear out of his personal SG bank before copying over. Anyway, r3 WotW - r3 dragon's wrath - tempest.
His non crit fully charged wrath hit for 4.2k at the high end. His crits were hitting 7.5k. If I fixed the stats, no problem getting to 9k since better STR would get the max melee buff for STR and buff the power from focus stacks, and getting EGO up to 300 would greatly improve my severity.
Oh, and getting back to the TK blade versus MA thing...I was spamming fully charged dragon's wrath because the rush from dragon attacks in MA was enough to recharge my energy bar. Really, really makes it obvious that TK blade-type attacks need damage buffed as they seriously underperform versus MA, and arguing that they cost less than MA is meaningless as MA can completely get around the cost of the attacks.
IMHO ego blade breach charge should have about another 2-5% damage increase to the max charge damage...
And I'm not just saying that because i want to break double 6k crits with it...
(Yes i am)
Also, it was I who was testing out tempest vs. discipline this morning that Xav got his info from. And for TK blades, discipline is giving you a better/faster fight ramp up for a set that has a TERRIBLE HORRIBLE fight ramp up as it's been since forever... You already have to combo a bunch of crap together just to get the attacks hitting for their highest damage, also having to try to get 8 stacks of focus up and running on top of the in-set work was hurting my overall damage.
Now that problem is gone, I start out a fight with damage equivalent to about 6-7 stacks of focus and stay there the whole fight with my critical chance increasing by 10% to a total of 45% (Spiking up to 62% with ego surge.) about 5-10 secs into the fight. Much better imo. The only thing I'm really missing is the little bit of extra energy return from tempest, but the ego leech power cost reduction is making up for that quite nicely now.
Also note: The aspect toggle forms (Bestial, Infernal, Aggressor, Mental Discipline...) +% damage bonus is not the same as the Martial arts focus +% damage. On the aspects the damage is a flat % increase just like severity, whereas the focus stacks are a diminishing % along with your passive boost and SS boost...
So while you may think: "Doooood! 22% is WAY less than the 144% i get from focus!"
In reality your brain is just getting hit with the blunt object that is cryptic math.
Edit: Also, yeah, Mental Discipline should apply to ranged and melee tk attacks like everyone is saying. :P
The description of Ego Reverbration states "Spirit Reverbration allows...". I assume Ego Reverb is the same or close to the same base code as it's spirit counterpart. Just a description oversight?
I am concerned about the dex/ego changes because I am a dex/int quarry tempest user on my munitions character. If it works as Ame says, ok, fine. But my damage is based on long streams of small damage. When talking about probability of a chance to crit, each time I don't crit is a reduction in DPS. What if, by some astronomical fluke, I never crit in the whole maintain? My damage WILL suffer. Greatly.
IMO, dex should be left the same. For dex/int users, we have to work to make sure ego gets up high enough to make a difference because intelligence and ego compete for the same slots in gearing. Let ego help raise crit chance and be more effective in crit severity, but leave dex alone. The big benefit for ego should be for improving resistance to holds. Some of those NPC holds are near unbreakable. (I remember a scene with Nighthawk from the old Defenders, through force of will, breaking free of a hold and coming back resurgent to help defeat the Zodiac)
If anything, fix crafting and gearing conflicts so this is not longer a problem.
Thanks for the Info Ame. It's interesting to see why you've decided to make these choices. According to the numbers you're providing, it makes SS EGO / Dex minor an at least viable option now, though possibly still not optimal (for proccing effects like Tempest Form).
Fun Fact: Crippling Challenge on TK Lance costs 1 Point. That's even worse than the old Shadow Blast / Eldritch Blast. I laughed for a while when I saw that.
At this point you know about the various FX glitches. but I'd like to weight in specifically on TK Assault.
I'm not too thrilled by the swirly hovering swords of doom. They just don't seem fast enough and behave erratically (the spiraling they do is cool, but I don't think fits the power). Personally, I'd much prefer if it went a little something like this:
Single hand outstretched a la Lightning Arc, Heatwave, and Psi Lash
Blades pop into existence over character's head each one quickly launching at the target after the next materializes
Blades move extremely fast and in a straight line -- I want to be able to feel them impaling my target
If you've got the advantage, additional swords materialize at once, launching to the secondary targets as well
Right now it feels like the swords are a stream of proximity mines, though I suspect that might be due to the ice explosions. Even still, it doesn't feel like they move quickly enough to actually impale anything.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, PTS:
Crit Chance - 26.6%
Crit Severity - 59.8%
Total increase of ~15.9% damage. A minor nerf, which we'd really prefer wasn't happening. Which is why we're still looking at the stat changes. This is right around the current worst case, but we'd like to make it so the worst case is a wash.
Heh. So basically all my DEX + something other than ego toons are pretty much worst case (I didn't plan this in advance). I am curious how you calculated the 15.9% number since tossing live and pts results into excel shows more than just a .7% difference in DPS.
This helps illustrate what we're going for, and as stated before, if the reduction in crit chance causes interaction issues with powers that are based on the previous crit chance percentages, those powers can be adjusted.
Okay, if you can get the worst case scenario to be a wash versus live, and then go through and adjust all the crit based powers to understand that their crits aren't going to happen as much, I'll promise to be quiet on the subject
Well, until we get around to looking at archery at which point I'll pipe up with the fact that archery's energy return on live right now is so very much worse than fire, electric, MA, the new TK stuffs, MSA, etc....
I was wondering, can Ego Form be availiable as a T1 power to the Telepathy set when the energy builder is chosen (i think HW can get defiance/unstoppable in this way)? I mean, telepathy is the same family and doesnt have a passive...
Kinda late to the discussion. Seems most have already provided feedback on most of the powers. Great to hear that TK Lance is not in it's final form.
Quick point outs that I wish are not ignored.
1. Tk Shield adv needs to provide more than just physical resistance. Perhaps make so that it provides resistance to all dmg?
2. Can something be added when TK the power doesn't have anything nearby?
3. Ego Form now has become just another paranormal passive. Seraphim buffs healing and HoT, Shadow Form provides some stealth and minor (very minor) HoT. What should Ego Form do? Be more resistant to dmg? Provide it's own buff to crit chance? Ego Form needs to have it's own adv over the other paranormal passives.
I hope we can also talk about this as well, which these topics could potentially benefit the Mentalist framework.
1. Tk Shield adv needs to provide more than just physical resistance. Perhaps make so that it provides resistance to all dmg?
Definately. I would see this being more beneficial to the set if its advantage had a laser-knight esque advantage. Would help the melee side of the set with its squishy problem a bit more, thats for sure.
The problem with Dex vs Ego, on live, is that crit intensity scaling is absolutely atrocious (going from 100 to 300 is less than a doubling of severity) whereas crit chance scaling is severe in the other direction (going from 100 to 300 is about 3.5x greater chance). Adjust that (say, put them both on a standard Cryptic DR model) and ego builds become sensible, without requiring stat splitting at all.
Kinda late to the discussion. Seems most have already provided feedback on most of the powers. Great to hear that TK Lance is not in it's final form.
Quick point outs that I wish are not ignored.
1. Tk Shield adv needs to provide more than just physical resistance. Perhaps make so that it provides resistance to all dmg?
2. Can something be added when TK the power doesn't have anything nearby?
3. Ego Form now has become just another paranormal passive. Seraphim buffs healing and HoT, Shadow Form provides some stealth and minor (very minor) HoT. What should Ego Form do? Be more resistant to dmg? Provide it's own buff to crit chance? Ego Form needs to have it's own adv over the other paranormal passives.
I hope we can also talk about this as well, which these topics could potentially benefit the Mentalist framework.
Very good questions. I'd really like to see Ego Form be given some ^.^ Your suggestion for ego form to give a buff to crit chance is very much welcomed ^.^
Alright, alright...the Dex/Ego thing is clearly the big mammajamma change here, and with Ame's examples I can see where Cryptic was headed. I see that the changes are supposed to make each stat stand on their own, but the main point, I figure, is that you've got a lot of players who're looking at the changes and seeing that they've got to build considerable levels of Ego in order to reach critical chances they're used to getting from nothing more than reasonable Dex. Like I said earlier, it just sorta makes me feel like I have to do DEX/EGO Superstats. Whether or not that's actually true, it's the impression a lot of players seem to be getting, and ye guys might want to do something to avert that.
Insofar as the changes to the stats alone are concerned...alright. Not sure I like Dexterity losing ten percent total effectiveness, but I don't think that really applies anyways. The math doesn't really work out that way, not with the modified functionality of the stat. I suppose it's just a case of people being distressed when they see their crit chance take a giant, largely unrecoverable nose-dive, increased severity or otherwise, if they run Dex without also running Ego. Kinda like..."where mah numbers go? T_T"
P.S. - Thanks for confirming that Ego Blade Dash is getting some manner of advantage. That has been bothering me more than it rightly should, considering that I don't have any sort of mentalist, melee or otherwise, on Live.
Yeah, ego form definitely needs a bit more love, more physical defense mitigation or possibly minor damage absorption ala IDF/unstoppable, or minor increase to dodge/avoidance since that still also fits in with the whole mentalist theme (bigger brain/precognition means you can predict the enemy's moves right?).
Failing making it more defensive, just give it some more damage, +severity or +crit or something, if you're gonna be stuck as a glass cannon you mine as well be a glass cannon right?
(I personally like the latter choice, I really, really miss my 10k+10k Ego blade breeches. >.>)
CInsofar as the changes to the stats alone are concerned...alright. Not sure I like Dexterity losing ten percent total effectiveness, but I don't think that really applies anyways. The math doesn't really work out that way, not with the modified functionality of the stat. I suppose it's just a case of people being distressed when they see their crit chance take a giant, largely unrecoverable nose-dive, increased severity or otherwise, if they run Dex without also running Ego. Kinda like..."where mah numbers go? T_T"
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. People are jumping to conclusions and getting all flustered over seeing a 5-7% drop in their crit % without seeing the big picture -- that any damage loss is less than 2% and in many cases your damage goes up. Even if you depend upon crits for energy statistically speaking you're still going to crit enough to keep proccing your energy unlock every 3 seconds.
But it's difficult to get people to see beyond the number shock. Hell, I did the same thing until I ran the numbers and saw there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
-Ego Form doesn't need a form of defense, instead make it so that every time you get damaged you get a stack of a new buff that increases all ego damage you do by a percentage.(like Defiance, but inverse)
-Or if everyone is really hellbent on making it less squishier give it a damage reflection buff that negates a portion of the damage you receive and redirects it back at whoever damages you.(a bit like the dual blade Eye of the Storm power) -Or better yet give both suggestions to Ego Form and make one or the other a custom advantage.
As for the dex/ego stat change, why not just slightly increase the base crit/severity scaling? That would tone down most people not happy with the current change, but on the other hand it would also be a nice buff for Dex/Ego superstatters. It's a good silver lining that I can live with honestly.
Ame, I love ya, but the straight damage numbers do not live on an island totally separated from energy concerns. Crit severity plays no role on the energy return from the various on-crit energy return mechanics. They depend solely on crit chance. And even if your damage is slightly higher from increased crit severity, it is going to play less of a factor if you are having to more frequently rely on your energy builder. The on-crit energy returns allow you to use your actual attack powers more often, driving up your dps. If that crit chance is lowered without the energy return from the less frequent crits being raised then that is a nerf to energy return which directly translates to a nerf to DPS.
Also, I don't know what the math is but with a 30% crit chance I'm not seeing 3 attacks in 10 getting crits. I see more like 3 or 4 attacks in 20 or 25 getting crits. Maybe its just my recurring bad luck with the RNG but it is part of the reason that I rarely make crit dependent builds.
One of the main goals of sharing crit chance/severity between Ego and Dex is to make it so they do not rely on each other, and I believe that goal has been reached. On Live, Ego is completely dependent on Dexterity in order to provide any benefit at all - the only stat in the game to function this way.
But now not only Ego will still need Dex but Dex now also will need Ego.
The Build with 250 Dex and 100 Ego is maybe what at the moment most of the people run, because you have
your 30+ crit chance and a fair severity but you don't need to superstat Ego and can go for Int, Con, Str or whatever.
With these changes it doesn't make much sense anymore to superstat one of them without the other.
You should really see that you balance at least the 200+ Dex and 100+ Ego Setup that it has the same crit chance
than on Live.
I just figured that if whatever they did to make Ego Form more functional was tied to Ego Leech, then that was one less buff for both the devs and the players to keep track of. They've already got precedent for Mental Discipline granting extra effectiveness from stacks of Ego Leech - it's a fairly neat solution to have Ego Form do the same.
As for the arguments to improve the cannon rather than armor the glass...great for PvP, but using the set in PvE requires a certain minimum level of survivability. You can get that out-set if ye like - just strapping on laser Knight and Inertial Dampening Field does wonders for the TK Blade builds, anyways - but I figured it'd be nice if we could see more offensive passives take their cue from Quarry. The only two offensive passives I can really let myself use anymore are Quarry and Unstoppable - Quarry for its flexibility and defensive benefits, Unstoppable for its monstrous energy regain on knock with Super Rec. Everything else has kinda been devoured by Primal Rage.
Damage is pretty easy to come by for most offensive passive builds; secondary effects such as improved defense or energy are significantly less so.
Ame, what about people using the 4 stat spread that was talked about as being the standard the stat system was designed around? Most of my characters have around or a little over 200 in their super stats with about 100 in two secondary stats, many of them even dumping about 70 in a 5th stat, usually CON on non-tanks to prevent getting gibbed randomly. My plan was, before these changes showed up on PTS at least, to eventually dump Algo gear into whatever still scales well. Alot of things start to hit DR hard at around 200 in a stat, I. E. most passive values, which means I wasn't looking forward to dumping it into DEX on most of them. Some can benefit from more EGO, but overall this still results in less total options.
Adjusting the energy returns on powers like Killer Instinct and Form of the Tempest a little to compensate would help some of these that are running around 200 DEX and 100 EGO (mostly DEX/INT Quarry builds), but one of such characters was using DEX without EGO to power Form of the Tempest and he saw a drop from 25% crit chance to 17%. That's a huge difference to a character that wasn't top of the pack at anything but beating up VIPER, and I basically would have to rework my entire build (again) to make it work the same under the new system.
One thing I forgot to mention, is it normal that Earth Splitters knock up is now buffed by Ego? I mean I don't mind, but Str seems to be the obvious choice here...
250 Dex, 100 Ego, Live:
Crit Chance - 31.7%
Crit Severity - 52.4%
Total increase of ~16.6% damage.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, PTS:
Crit Chance - 26.6%
Crit Severity - 59.8%
Total increase of ~15.9% damage. A minor nerf, which we'd really prefer wasn't happening. Which is why we're still looking at the stat changes. This is right around the current worst case, but we'd like to make it so the worst case is a wash.
Thanks for writing out these calculations, I understand and agree with your point that it only amounts to a minor nerf to the total damage increase critchance*critsev. Assuming an unlimited supply of energy, long-term average DPS is the same as it was before. (if we stipulate that Dex + Ego = 600 and maximize total damage = critchance*critsev, the Live maximum bonus is 32.8% at dex = 318 and ego = 282, on test its 32.8% at Dex = 262 and ego = 338). Making the optimal values of Dex lower does cause a big effect when we consider synergy as I describe below.
Ame, I love ya, but the straight damage numbers do not live on an island totally separated from energy concerns. Crit severity plays no role on the energy return from the various on-crit energy return mechanics. They depend solely on crit chance. And even if your damage is slightly higher from increased crit severity, it is going to play less of a factor if you are having to more frequently rely on your energy builder. The on-crit energy returns allow you to use your actual attack powers more often, driving up your dps. If that crit chance is lowered without the energy return from the less frequent crits being raised then that is a nerf to energy return which directly translates to a nerf to DPS.
Your absolutely right here, and I think these considerations are important. Killer Instinct and Archer's Instinct don't need this nerf, a solution would be to slightly raise the energy gain per proc on those two powers.
Martial arts forms are also nerfed by this change, not just because the energy procs on crit, but the amount of energy returned scales with Dex, and so the changes on PTS that favor most of us reducing Dex a bit and increasing Ego will lower the energy return per proc. Lower Dex also means less energy from rush, so these changes amount to a triple nerf for martial arts forms: they proc less often, they give less energy at the now lower optimal Dex values, and rush gives less energy at the new lower optimal Dex values.
On live, Dex boosts everything about martial artists, the damage bonus from their forms, the energy return from forms and rush, and the dodge bonus from parry are all tied to Dex. Forcing martial artists to take less Dex and more Ego to achieve their current critchance*critsev bonus adds up to a major nerf to MA for all these reasons.
Also, I don't know what the math is but with a 30% crit chance I'm not seeing 3 attacks in 10 getting crits. I see more like 3 or 4 attacks in 20 or 25 getting crits. Maybe its just my recurring bad luck with the RNG but it is part of the reason that I rarely make crit dependent builds.
I've checked crit rates on many powers by killing dozens of test dummies while running /combatlog , then using a script to parse the results and see what fraction of the hits crit. I haven't found any anomalies while doing this, the results always eventually tend to the crit rate listed on the character sheet.
I did it to test claims of crit rate scaling with charge time, or claims like "chainsaw crits a lot", but haven't found any statistically reproducible anomalies of this kind.
The only character I'm considering superstatting Ego on is my main, who's currently Pre/Int running double bubbles and AoPM. And I'm only doing that for the novelty of being able to hit things with Telekinesis. It's going to be a downgrade, overall. (Well, maybe not, I'll have an AoE that doesn't empty my energy bar in TK Burst).
I still think Ego needs a reliable way to do something for energy with the crit-dependent sets (Munitions/Archery). Having to rely on the RNG to get an energy return is bad enough, but having it be tied to doing damage is even worse. The reason why people take Form of the Tempest with Muni or MSA with Archery is because energy unlocks based on crit are self-defeating and unreliable. You need to either double-stack them (Killer Instinct or Hunter's Instinct with FotT) or stack them with a more reliable energy source (self-affecting cooldowns/short cooldown attacks with MSA).
Ego form needs some sort of survivability, as has been mentioned. And in general, Ego (the stat) needs to add something to survivability. Int gives you shorter cooldowns on active defenses and cheaper heals. End gives you more energy for self healing. Ego...makes you do more damage so you take more aggro so you need more defense because you're still not doing "enough" more damage to wipe out the threatening things before they roflstomp you. It's a bad cycle. The ranged knockback is nice, but it's bad because it competes with the energy stats you need to fuel most of the good ranged knockbacks.
As a benchmark...try comparing the survivability of a Dex/Ego character without using Quarry, WotW or a defensive passive to any offensive build with different superstats. About the only one that has the potential to be worse is Rec/End, and even that can be mitigated with use of Support Drones and MR (it has more energy to deal with the increased energy cost, and MR's bubble pop energy return scales on Rec).
Dex/Ego locks you into being a "damage dealer", but you don't have the energy to do truly sustainable damage, you don't have the build flexibility to gain the survivability other superstat combos have, and you don't do "enough" more damage to make it worth being a one-trick pony that can only use its trick between energy builder shots.
Though part of the above is because Str + Enrage is usually better for damage than even full Dex/Ego, because it's more controllable and still leaves room for a survivability or energy boosting superstat (and cries out for one, as you'll need either Con or Int to maintain the stacks).
I think the changes are a good starting point, but until I can honestly suggest Dex/Ego as a superstat combo for someone who wants to be a "damage dealer" without feeling guilty about misleading them, I don't quite think it's enough.
I haven't yet made a suggestion as to how to "fix" this because I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't involve either a nerf to Enrage or turning Ego into a hybrid energy stat. Though I think the latter's probably going to be the way to go.
Maybe have it innately give a stacking cost reduction that builds with any critical hit and slowly falls off? Dunno if the tech exists to do such a thing, though.
The problem with Dex vs Ego, on live, is that crit intensity scaling is absolutely atrocious (going from 100 to 300 is less than a doubling of severity) whereas crit chance scaling is severe in the other direction (going from 100 to 300 is about 3.5x greater chance). Adjust that (say, put them both on a standard Cryptic DR model) and ego builds become sensible, without requiring stat splitting at all.
I agree that improving EGO's scaling, along with returning hold resistance, returns it to viability as a superstat.
I still see a second issue in that DEX/EGO is much better as a melee stat than a ranged stat. In contrast, because of the quality of Enrage and Imbue, STR/CON/INT fits oddly well to most ranged builds. And because Enraged is easier to maintain/build with Defiance and AoPM, ranged offensive passives are rarely an optimal choice. Add in the Warhead Defiance cheat, and that becomes never. I'd like to see a toggle for both ranged and melee that scales with superstats, but has half the damage bonus of the MA toggles. Or an enraged equivalent that scales with superstats, gives half the damage bonus of enraged, but gets double stacks from offensive forms.
Also, it was I who was testing out tempest vs. discipline
Now that problem is gone, I start out a fight with damage equivalent to about 6-7 stacks of focus and stay there the whole fight with my critical chance increasing by 10% to a total of 45% (Spiking up to 62% with ego surge.) about 5-10 secs into the fight. Much better imo. The only thing I'm really missing is the little bit of extra energy return from tempest, but the ego leech power cost reduction is making up for that quite nicely now.
Explained that way, it sounds like it adds decent diversity to the form family.
Would it be too much to ask that the melee portion of discipline buff all melee? (In addition to it gaining a ranged tk buff)
It just seems like it would be nice to get the full mileage out of a new form by making it universally usable for all melee. That way it would be a good buff for TK but also give all melee some new options.
For example:
if i superstated Ego but not Dex and took discipline on any melee toon i would still come out with a nice dmg buff/crit chance and have the flexibility to go with a super stat that buffs survivability or energy gain.
It just feels like consideration is only being given to stats that the player raises into a 200+ range.
There is no real incentive here to have 100 points in either ego or dex. Perhaps we are expected to follow the path of least resistance and just dump 300 points into our superstats and ignore everything else, but that's not very fun. Con/End/Rec get a perfectly reasonable benefit for putting a small amount into them, and Dex and Ego haven't, don't and apparently won't ever. I'm curious why half the stats are scaled to be worthless unless they are your superstats, while others have completely flat scaling. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and it very much detracts from creativity in character design.
Here is an interesting way to look at the changes: constrain the total amount of Dex + Ego and calculate the maximum damage bonus and the {Dex,Ego} combination that allows that bonus. The formulas I'm using for the calculation on Live are:
For the calculations of the PTS version, I use 0.7dex + 0.3 ego instead of Dex for computing crit chance, and use 0.2 dex + 0.8 ego instead of ego for computing crit severity. I checked that these formula produce the same values as Ame gives, within rounding error.
So maximizing the Damage bonus on Live looks like this:
1. When Dex + Ego is 400 or less, the optimal damage bonus on Live is bigger than on PTS, but never by more than 1%. Still that's a considerably wider range of straight nerfing than seen in Ame's post.
2. When Dex + Ego is 300 or less, the optimum for Ego is less than it is on Live, kind of a surprise.
3. It seems that Dex values above ~260 are never optimal from the point of view of maximizing the damage bonus of the crit layer. Once Dex is at 260, it's always optimal to increase Ego (a big new conflict for the Dex based synergies found in martial arts). Contrast the situation on live, optimal {Dex,Ego} values increase more symmetrically on the high end.
4. Finally, though it's obvious at this point, overall the above charts demonstrate a shift in emphasis from Dex to Ego on the medium to high end of stats. Look at the change on the line Dex + Ego = 600, a realistic total for a Dex/Ego superstat character, the roles of Dex and Ego have been nearly reversed.
On live, I play a martial arts characters with 420-460 Dex (primal majesty aura). This Dex scales my focus of the unleashed tempest damage bonus, energy gain, rush from Dragon's Claws, and dodge rating from parry. The relative shift in emphasis from Dex to Ego is a definite nerf for this build. The build performs above baseline, that's true, but the Str/Con/Int builds are already stronger than the Dex/Ego/Con/Int builds for a couple of reasons, and the net result of all these changes is to put Dex builds further behind Str builds.
I haven't yet made a suggestion as to how to "fix" this because I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't involve either a nerf to Enrage or turning Ego into a hybrid energy stat. Though I think the latter's probably going to be the way to go.
Maybe have it innately give a stacking cost reduction that builds with any critical hit and slowly falls off? Dunno if the tech exists to do such a thing, though.
This idea of making Ego a hybrid energy stat is what I think is a better solution as well.
I don't think it's ideal, but my first thought was to make is a reverse version of Intelligence, that is it would [along with Crit Severity, hold resistance and ranged knock scaling] give a boost to maximum energy and Equilibrium at about one third the value of Recovery and Endurance alone.
At face value this seems like it would be a very valuable set of things to have in a single stat, at 240 ish Ego [super stating it] you'd gain Crit Severity, Hold Resist, Ranged knock buff and the equivalent of + 80 energy and + 80 recovery worth of equilibrium...
I think this would even make Int-Ego a pretty good stat combo.
Comments
Where did I ever once say destroy every toon? I'm pretty sure nerfing DEX is going to have zero impact on STR/CON might toons.
I only tested three flavors of DEX toon because the third works as a proxy for every stat combo not involving EGO in some way. I mean, sure I could have tested DEX/INT non-quarry, DEX/PRE, DEX/STR, DEX/REC, and DEX/END along with DEX/CON, but they'd all come out exactly the same as DEX/CON did.
So no, it isn't only 1 out of 3. It's only 1 possible combo not effected and one other combo also requiring a specific passive getting a small effect. Every other combo is significantly affected.
In my perfect MMO, the best gear would be stuff you earned by collecting specific tokens and then going and buying exactly what you want. So if I was designing things, UNITY, Nemesis, and Acclaim gear would all be the best. I'd also drastically lower the costs on all types of earned gear. You should be able to buy one piece of new gear every couple of "average" play sessions. Right now, it takes a week of hard grinding, or a month or more of normal play to get there.
Second up in quality are the cosmic drops. These are hard fights, and players deserver good rewards for them. Of course, I'm not thinking quite pheromone quality since I think that thing is a wee bit overpowered. But stat wise, better than crafted but not as good as earned give them time and difficulty invovled.
Next would come crafted gear. I suspect I'm not alone in wanting better crafting because one of the most common questions from new players is "Which crafting school is best for xxxxx?" I think we should be able to make level whatever gear with the stat combos we want that is almost , but not quite, as good as the earned gear. Now, the costs of crafting items would need to be increased from current levels so that the time investment for crafting is similiar to that of earned.
Fourth in line quality wise would be the scaled algo boss drops. They're harder to get than random mob drops, so should be better, but given how much faster it is to get at bosses, they shouldn't be as good as any of the previous categories.
Fifth is general mission rewards. I would leave some mission rewards as better than scaled algo for things like chains, but the rest should be about where they are now.
Last, we have random mob drops. These are mostly filler now until players get the time to get better, and they'd stay that way.
/derail
I love the new TK powers. They remind me of the Blades spell from Fable 2, and I loved that spell.
If Mental Dicipline would boost ranged Ego damage as well, I would be very happy, because Ranged TK would be a lot better in that case.
Also, the new TK is now my favourite power. I wouldn't mind if it doesn't work with no objects around, but since it takes a power pick it should be at least as easy to pick up heavy objects as it is with STR. Also, it seemed to me that it prioritized heavy objects in range in my limited testing, but if it doesn't, it really should.
That last bit actually got tested this morning using DEX/EGO.
Versus Form of the Tempest, Mental Discipline starts as a better damage buff. Now, once you get your 8 stacks of focus, Tempest does get very slightly better damage. However, by the time you get to that point, the mental discipline toon has a huge headstart in damage output that the tempest toon will not be able to make up before most fights are over.
So as a toggle for the melee side of TK, Mental Discipline is fine.
Now, were things fall apart is if you compare Mental Discipline ego blade-type attacks versus Tempest dragon's wrath or dragon's claws which just obliterate a TK toon in terms of damage output. It takes a while for ego blade breech to match up to a 9k dragon's wrath or 11k dragon's claw crit. And while the TK toon is playing catch-up for the first big hit, the MA toons are getting another and another...
Fair enough. I'm not a math dude so Ill take your word on that.
So are you saying that you would prefer to keep mental discipline as it as as apposed to making it buff ranged and melee damage?
Uh...no
I'm kinda a fan of set specific toggles as they reward people who stay within a set without making such builds required.
In the case of a hybrid set like TK, I think the toggle should buff both sides of it. I also think something needs to be done with the avenger/brawler problem the set will face for people who actually try to build hybrid.
Bigger pictures, munitions needs a toggle, all the elemental damages need toggles, magic needs a toggle, shadow needs a toggle...
Fully agree on ego there.
Devs: please revert the changes to dex and ego then give ego some kind of enhanced energy mechanism.
How do you reach 9k with Dragon's Wrath? My Dex/Int Quarry Dual Blades char has decent gear (Stats around 250 Dex, 215 Int, 150 Ego, 50 Str) and I've never seen anything above 6k, and that's pretty rare already. Most crits are in the high 4k or low 5k range. Am I doing something wrong? (Damage mostly observed on Freon on elite as I'm killing him a lot atm). Or is it because my fights while farming are most of the time to short to stack up 8 focus stacks?
Now onto the topic:
I agree with the poster who don't like the Dex/Ego changes. I'm levelign a Dex/Pre Fire character and my test build on the PTS got a significantly reduced crit change with only a small severity boost to compensate. And his crit change wasn't the greatest thing already since you need to put a lot of stats in energy management too.
Please rethink the Dex/Ego changes!
TK Assault - Sword Missiles!? AWESOME <^_^> I love this power.
TK Burst - Swordsplosion? Also awesome! <^_^>
TK Lance - ... Incredibly disappointing. It looks, at least at present, like it just uses the same graphic as Defile. <;_;> I suspect this is a placeholder though. Right?
Mental Discipline - Need to test it more, but I like the idea behind it. Bonus crit works perfectly with my build too <'x'> Are you guys just following me around, trying to make me like you? >_>; ... it's working. *edit* Forgot to add: Even if you change the color on it, it still turns you pink when you finish charging it.
*double edit* Mental Discipline's ID Blades Zero Point Advantage does not seem to be working at present.
Obviously none of this tells you much about how well this stuff works; but visuals are crucial to me and thus the first thing I check.
Also, alt-tabbing from full-screen mode seems to cause crashes at present. I sent in a crash report about it. It doesn't seem to happen in Windowed Maximized mode though.
Spent most of last night playing with the changes, getting a basic feel for how things worked now, seeing what was what. Largely...holy shagbawls TK patch. Heh...futzing with the entire set, but in a mostly beneficial way. Mostly.
The change to Ego scaling for melee TK attacks is something of an about damned time reaction. There was no reason whatsoever for Ego Blade users to have to jump through hoops to get what phys-melee got off Strength by default. That was part of the issue with Ego as a Superstat in my book, and one of the big reasons I never felt like bothering with a TK character. Good fix, will take. Even if it took too damn long.
I am still confused as to why Ego Blade Dash doesn't have a custom advantage like the other lunges. As it stands, there is no reason whatsoever beyond look to take EBD over Thunderbolt Lunge. They do the exact same thing, except Thunderbolt Lunge can be advantaged to stun as well as snare/root. Sure, it matters less to the PVP types who never take anything but Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground on their lunges, but the rest of us are kinda out in the cold here, Cryptic.
New TK powers/adjustments:
-TK Assault is fun. Assault is a fine addition to the set. I know people are all offended that the TK set revolves around Psyloche/Green Lantern-style constructs rather than raw TK, but that's not really important. I have to say, I was really surprised to see Assault as a T0 power. Largely because it's good. I'm looking it over and the first thing to hit my brain is Damn, this looks like Lightning Arc... Increased crit chance scaling off Ego Leech is a fun addition, though I'm not sure yet if it truly competes with something like Lightning Arc's +20% off Negative Ions. 'Course, TK Assault's a T0 power, the fact that it's actually useful is already more than I normally ask of those. I really wish it didn't self-root, but again...c'est la vie. The advantage is good as well I had to sit there for a few moments thinking about it, which I don't normally do with advantages.
-TK Burst is entertaining. I really like the animation, and in my ranged TK tests, I actually found that it didn't feel redundant to TK Wave, which was my big concern. Giving it some measure of guaranteed Ego Leech generation is also a solid move the set's clearly focusing on building and dumping Leech now, which means one needs reliable ways to build Leech. The knockdown advantage is helpful and seems to fit thematically as well you generate an explosion and people fall over. I don't really have any complaints about it, it's a solid, viable T1
-TK Lance... Oh, TK Lance. I was so looking forward to discharging this giant TK spike of Death, only to find that it's neither a giant TK spike, nor very deathy for that matter. Reading the change in the update notes, I was thinking this was going to be some sort of rough TK analogue to Gigabolt or Force Cascade, a Doomblast that really took it out of the character. Instead, it's kind of an Itchy-Rash blast that really takes it out of the character. The tap damage is fine, the charge damage is bogus, especially when it eats all of your Ego Leech. The increased Leech generation based on consumption strikes me as awkward I can see that it's intended to make Ego Reverb more valuable, but really...you're going to gimp a T3 power to help an energy unlock? The advantage is the only reason to even think about bothering, and that's not nearly enough reason. More damage on charge, a stronger benefit for consuming Ego Leech, and for Bob's sake change the animation. This is TK LANCE, not TK Goo-Beam.
-Mental Discipline. Ugh. I want to like it, but I really can't. Form of the Tempest kicks it up and down the mountain for melee builds, and other builds...can't really use it. The increased crit chance is an interesting idea for a toggle form, but it's not enough extra crit chance ESPECIALLY in light of the stat changes I'ma get into later and the base damage increase is way too small for a set that really can't leverage Enrage without pulling some serious weirdness. And currently, two stacks of Focus in a normal (non-Primal Majesty) Dex build outdoes Mental Discipline's damage boost. One stack of Focus equals it in a Primal Majesty build. Bad Cryptic. Remove the melee restriction and up the scaling for crit chance it's crit chance, not raw damage, it can afford to scale 1-3 like Aggressor does, if not even higher.
-Ego Reverberation/Ego Leech: Sure. Focusing on improved costing rather than energy gain or whatever-else for Ego Leech works for me, kinda fits with what the rest of the set's been doing for a while. I think it's a little too hard to build Ego Leech up considering that the set's now equipped to cannibalize it, but the basic effect is fine. Heh...I ran tests with an INT/EGO character in the Powerhouse and had to stop for a moment. Intelligence and Ego...there's a combination I never thought'd see the light of day. Ego Reverb is a bit grumpy, given that Ego Leech isn't the most reliable buff in the world, but it's functional. This time, at least.
-Ego Form is still weak. My ranged TK builds ran Seraphim, my Blade tests ran AoPM. My Ego Form tests ended with me dead on the floor. It'd be nice to see this offer some form of defensive benefit like Quarry does. Perhaps scaling damage resistance based on stacks of Ego leech - ~4% resistance per stack sounds like it'd about fit to me, though I'd personally like to see it up around 5%. The damage also struck me as sub-par, which is a little awkward considering I know better, but it did. Adding scaling defense based on Ego Leech doesn't help people who want to take Ego Form without Ego attacks, but nobody does that anyways. For people who do take Ego Form, the defense benefit would be invaluable for Ego Blade characters.
-Ego Blade Annihilation is useful, but not as useful as it could be. I like the consumption mechanic, but it doesn't deal nearly enough extra damage without the advantage. The advantaged numbers should be the base numbers for the consumption effect given how important Ego Leech is to the set now, and the advantage should, perhaps, add +50% damage rather than double to try and keep it in line. As well, I think the attack needs to do a bit more to differentiate itself from Reaper's Embrace. Especially since the two share an animation. It'd be nice to see that Id Infusion-style buff thingus from TK Lance diffuse over to EBA, too. Giving the melee characters the same ability to temporarily increase their Ego Leech generation rate would help out a good deal, and it'd make when to charge one's EBA a more tactical choice, as well.
-Telekinesis is win. Hilarious, delicious win. I did laff when I punched it and watched giant boxes pick themselves up and sail through the air to slam into Purple Gang skulls of their own volition. Hee hee haww. That said...the overworld is definitely full of more tables and chairs than it is giant training weights. The skill is certainly better, but both the damage scaling and weight limits for it could use some work considering the random nature of its ammunition. It'll always be more for fluff and gigglesauce than a truly competitive damage dealer, and unlike many other posters, I think that's kinda where it should stick. The skill'd lose something if it didn't send random bits of terrain flying at your foes' heads. That said, it'd be nice if I could occasionally pick up garbage trucks, Titanic Weights, or Ted Kennedy and hurl them at my foe For Massive Damage.
And now, for the fun part...
-Dexterity/Ego Crit Futzing: No. Just no. I get that Ego as a Superstat was totally pointless without Dex before, and that's no good. I get that adding some measure of crit chance to Ego is an easy place to start fixing it, and I'm cool with easy solutions. When they work. THIS DOESN'T WORK. You guys are robbing Peter to pay Paul punishing Dex users in order to reward Ego users is just a chump move. I get that the increased severity Dex got from Ego is supposed to make up the DPS difference, and for all I know it very well might. It also causes a lot of problems for people who rely on crit chance for their Energy, which is basically everyone who has a Dexterity character. You're sabotaging the mechanics that Dex users have always relied on and not giving them any real benefit for it I get that Form of the Tempest is likely more ubiquitous than you like, but there's got to be a better way to fix that. Like...y'know, making other Forms more viable.
I've always thought that every Superstat in this game should be able to stand on its own, independently of the others. Ego shouldn't need to be an also-ran to Dex, and Recovery shouldn't need to be an also-ran to Endurance. Instead of working on a solution to make Ego stand up by itself, you guys are introducing a 'solution' which which knocks Dexterity down. Blargh.
Grah...I suppose it's not a huge deal for most builds most and it certainly does make Ego more attractive. To anyone but Marksman Archetypes and archers in general, who're gonna just sit down and cry when this goes live and they lose a third of their already limited energy generation. As soon as I figure out how to do it, I'ma be porting my mixed0-range Quarry character over to the test shard to run some tests with a properly configured and geared character, see how badly this change actually butthurts my energy. Regardless of all that though, intermingling Dex and Ego so that players feel forced to take both is just uncool. I shouldn't have to feel forced to do anything in this game, the creative freedom of the Freeform building system is why I went Gold in the freakin' first place. That's my gripe whatever the mechanics actually say, Cryptic is sorta standing behind me with a giant club with EGO written on it saying You took Dex as a Superstat? I really hope you know what your second Superstat choice is...
Find some other way to make Ego a stand-alone stat, please.
Edit: it also means that I will be rebuilding any toons that rely on criticals for either DPS or energy unless those toons use both Dex and Ego.
I take it since three new zero-point advantages are being added that it's not coming anytime soon?
Expulse (and Phoenix flight, which shares its animation) fails to play properly 99.99% of the time. The character floats up in the air for the charge-up, but the delivery animation fails to play - the character pops directly back to default stance.
NPCS killed by a knockback attack fly off... then yo-yo back to the point they were standing at when the attack occured. This is flat-out creepy looking.
Maybe call it Discipline?
I personally like Ego Boost, but that's just me.
One of the main goals of sharing crit chance/severity between Ego and Dex is to make it so they do not rely on each other, and I believe that goal has been reached. On Live, Ego is completely dependent on Dexterity in order to provide any benefit at all - the only stat in the game to function this way. While Dex may provide a smaller chance to crit now, a 27% chance to crit is still a lot - more than 1 in 4 attacks will be critting, meaning with high speed attacks (say in the 0.67s activate range) you will still be critting on average once every 2.4 seconds, and those crits will be hitting even harder - 43% harder, instead of 16%.
With these changes, Ego is capable of standing without Dex - 10% crit chance and 80% Crit Severity is enough to matter, especially with the additional benefits Ego now provides.
I'm going to provide a handful of numbers that help illustrate how the Dex/Ego changes could affect you. Mind you, I am only referring to pure damage from crit at this point, as that is the only thing that matters on a pure stat basis. If a power that relies on critical hit chance has become weakened by this to a point where we are concerned, we can tweak that individual power - it is not a reason to not proceed with these stat changes. The feedback on those powers is still very welcome - if you feel a power (such as Form of the Tempest) is being negatively affected by these changes, that is definitely valuable feedback, and something we're already aware of and looking at. Also, these aren't necessarily the final numbers for the stat changes. We'll be looking at feedback here as well as doing lots of our own testing to figure out if the numbers are where we want them.
Anyhow, numbers.
First, here is the math to determine contribution to crit chance and crit severity. Previously, and on Live:
Crit Chance: determined by Dex + Critical Strike Rating, at equal values.
Crit Severity: determined by Ego + Critical Severity Rating, at equal values.
On PTS:
Crit Chance: determined by (Dex*0.7) + (Ego*0.3) + Critical Strike Rating
Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.8) + (Dex*0.2) + Critical Severity Rating
We examined many values for splitting the two of them up, and were happiest with this as our first pass. It's possible (perhaps even probable) that additional changes may still occur.
Say you have 300 Dex, and 10 Ego. On Live, your crit stats would be:
Crit Chance - 36%
Crit Severity - 16.6%
Total increase of ~6% damage.
The same stats, 300 Dex and 10 Ego, with the current PTS numbers provides:
Crit Chance - 27.6%
Crit Severity - 43.3%
Total increase of ~12% damage. This means the damage increase of just Dex has been roughly doubled.
Looking at the converse, you have 300 Ego and 10 Dex. On Live:
Crit Chance - 0.1%
Crit Severity - 90.8%
These 2 combined result in less than a 0.1% increase to your damage output.
300 Ego and 10 Dex on PTS:
Crit Chance - 9.9%
Crit Severity - 81.6%
Total increase of ~8% damage. The damage benefit from just Ego has been increased substantially.
Clearly, if you are gearing exclusively for one stat or the other, this change is a buff. Let's look at some mixed stats.
First, the easy one. If you have 250 Dex and 250 Ego, your stats will be:
Crit Chance - 31.7%
Crit Severity - 82.9%
And those numbers should be unchanged on PTS. If they are different, something has gone wrong.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, Live:
Crit Chance - 31.7%
Crit Severity - 52.4%
Total increase of ~16.6% damage.
250 Dex, 100 Ego, PTS:
Crit Chance - 26.6%
Crit Severity - 59.8%
Total increase of ~15.9% damage. A minor nerf, which we'd really prefer wasn't happening. Which is why we're still looking at the stat changes. This is right around the current worst case, but we'd like to make it so the worst case is a wash.
250 Ego, 100 Dex, Live:
Crit Chance - 10.4%
Crit Severity - 82.9%
Total increase of ~8.6% damage.
250 Ego, 100 Dex, PTS:
Crit Chance - 17.9%
Crit Severity - 77.8%
Total increase of ~13.9% damage. A sizable buff.
This helps illustrate what we're going for, and as stated before, if the reduction in crit chance causes interaction issues with powers that are based on the previous crit chance percentages, those powers can be adjusted.
And her are a couple of quick responses unrelated to Dex/Ego:
The TK Lance anim/FX are placeholder. I thought they made it in before the build, but what youa re all reporting (Pink Defile) is exactly what I setup as placeholder while the FX were being worked on.
Ego Blade Dash will be getting a custom advantage.
Thanks for the heads up, probably a conflict with the same advantage being on Ego Form. We'll get it fixed.
Knock To's do not benefit from Knock Strength at all - they are knocking to you, to a specific point, not an amount of distance that can be modified via a bonus percentage.
But that's BORING. We need something that will strike fear in the hearts of a thousand enemies.
We shall call it: DISCIPLINE OF THE ULTIMATE HERO.
Also, Ame cracking the whip in a stylish manner. What's the word about Ego Form, EBA and the Ego Toggle?
So Dex goes down slighlty in utility (90% of previous rating) and Ego goes up (110%). I don't have a problem with this myself if only because Dex was kinda painfully obviously the power stat, the one everyone gravitates to includingthe Devs when picking stats for the archetypes. The fair argument being leveled against this is less about DPS and more about abilities that proc off of crits. Until you address that aspect expect the hue and cry to continue
Do you have any thoughts on why I'm seeing characters with 53 Dex GAIN crit chance from Dex when comparing Live vs. Test? (Exact numbers reported in an earlier post in this thread.) Did the 'rating to percentage' curve ALSO get altered during this pass?
First things first, when I say 9k dragon's wrath, I mean what can I build to if I push stats a bit beyond normal and focus on just that. Of course, I'm pretty sure I can get 10k wrath if I got really silly, I just never have, so I usually just use the 9k figure which I have done.
Stuff to look at
Your stats are solid, especially for a quarry build. But if you want to push damage on wrath, you need to get somewhere around 300 DEX, 300 EGO, everything else into STR.
Way of the Warrior buffs melee damage more than Quarry buffs physical. Quarry on the other hand is a good choice for sustained DPS or general flexibility in a build.
Next up, you didn't mention if you had an MA form or not. If not, that's a huge part of the problem as every stack of focus buffs your damage significantly based on DEX and STR. As an example, 250 DEX 50 STR is about 17% per stack, and you can get 8 stacks. Now if you were at 300 DEX and 150 STR...
Are you running in brawler or guardian? Quarry lends itself to hybrid ranged/melee so I have to ask.
Oh, the sneaky one...are you r3 dragon's wrath or r2 wrath + tiger's courage. Believe it or not, tiger's courage is actually the wrong choice except for a very narrow range of critical percentage. See, the damage buff from tiger's courage is already considered bonus damage and so does NOT get buffed by criticals. So what happens with TC is that your non-crit attacks get better all the time if you're above 20% critical chance, but most of the time (except for a very narrow range), your critical attacks get worse. Like I said, sneaky Cryptic math.
Anyway, just goofing on test, I turned my DEX/CON MA tank into a DEX/EGO brawler WotW with 50 STR, 297 DEX, 225 EGO. Not great stats since I forgot to grab my gear out of his personal SG bank before copying over. Anyway, r3 WotW - r3 dragon's wrath - tempest.
His non crit fully charged wrath hit for 4.2k at the high end. His crits were hitting 7.5k. If I fixed the stats, no problem getting to 9k since better STR would get the max melee buff for STR and buff the power from focus stacks, and getting EGO up to 300 would greatly improve my severity.
Oh, and getting back to the TK blade versus MA thing...I was spamming fully charged dragon's wrath because the rush from dragon attacks in MA was enough to recharge my energy bar. Really, really makes it obvious that TK blade-type attacks need damage buffed as they seriously underperform versus MA, and arguing that they cost less than MA is meaningless as MA can completely get around the cost of the attacks.
And I'm not just saying that because i want to break double 6k crits with it...
(Yes i am)
Also, it was I who was testing out tempest vs. discipline this morning that Xav got his info from. And for TK blades, discipline is giving you a better/faster fight ramp up for a set that has a TERRIBLE HORRIBLE fight ramp up as it's been since forever... You already have to combo a bunch of crap together just to get the attacks hitting for their highest damage, also having to try to get 8 stacks of focus up and running on top of the in-set work was hurting my overall damage.
Now that problem is gone, I start out a fight with damage equivalent to about 6-7 stacks of focus and stay there the whole fight with my critical chance increasing by 10% to a total of 45% (Spiking up to 62% with ego surge.) about 5-10 secs into the fight. Much better imo. The only thing I'm really missing is the little bit of extra energy return from tempest, but the ego leech power cost reduction is making up for that quite nicely now.
Also note: The aspect toggle forms (Bestial, Infernal, Aggressor, Mental Discipline...) +% damage bonus is not the same as the Martial arts focus +% damage. On the aspects the damage is a flat % increase just like severity, whereas the focus stacks are a diminishing % along with your passive boost and SS boost...
So while you may think: "Doooood! 22% is WAY less than the 144% i get from focus!"
In reality your brain is just getting hit with the blunt object that is cryptic math.
Edit: Also, yeah, Mental Discipline should apply to ranged and melee tk attacks like everyone is saying. :P
The description of Ego Reverbration states "Spirit Reverbration allows...". I assume Ego Reverb is the same or close to the same base code as it's spirit counterpart. Just a description oversight?
I am concerned about the dex/ego changes because I am a dex/int quarry tempest user on my munitions character. If it works as Ame says, ok, fine. But my damage is based on long streams of small damage. When talking about probability of a chance to crit, each time I don't crit is a reduction in DPS. What if, by some astronomical fluke, I never crit in the whole maintain? My damage WILL suffer. Greatly.
IMO, dex should be left the same. For dex/int users, we have to work to make sure ego gets up high enough to make a difference because intelligence and ego compete for the same slots in gearing. Let ego help raise crit chance and be more effective in crit severity, but leave dex alone. The big benefit for ego should be for improving resistance to holds. Some of those NPC holds are near unbreakable. (I remember a scene with Nighthawk from the old Defenders, through force of will, breaking free of a hold and coming back resurgent to help defeat the Zodiac)
If anything, fix crafting and gearing conflicts so this is not longer a problem.
Fun Fact: Crippling Challenge on TK Lance costs 1 Point. That's even worse than the old Shadow Blast / Eldritch Blast. I laughed for a while when I saw that.
At this point you know about the various FX glitches. but I'd like to weight in specifically on TK Assault.
I'm not too thrilled by the swirly hovering swords of doom. They just don't seem fast enough and behave erratically (the spiraling they do is cool, but I don't think fits the power). Personally, I'd much prefer if it went a little something like this:
Single hand outstretched a la Lightning Arc, Heatwave, and Psi Lash
Blades pop into existence over character's head each one quickly launching at the target after the next materializes
Blades move extremely fast and in a straight line -- I want to be able to feel them impaling my target
If you've got the advantage, additional swords materialize at once, launching to the secondary targets as well
Right now it feels like the swords are a stream of proximity mines, though I suspect that might be due to the ice explosions. Even still, it doesn't feel like they move quickly enough to actually impale anything.
Heh. So basically all my DEX + something other than ego toons are pretty much worst case (I didn't plan this in advance). I am curious how you calculated the 15.9% number since tossing live and pts results into excel shows more than just a .7% difference in DPS.
Okay, if you can get the worst case scenario to be a wash versus live, and then go through and adjust all the crit based powers to understand that their crits aren't going to happen as much, I'll promise to be quiet on the subject
Well, until we get around to looking at archery at which point I'll pipe up with the fact that archery's energy return on live right now is so very much worse than fire, electric, MA, the new TK stuffs, MSA, etc....
I would like that too.
Quick point outs that I wish are not ignored.
1. Tk Shield adv needs to provide more than just physical resistance. Perhaps make so that it provides resistance to all dmg?
2. Can something be added when TK the power doesn't have anything nearby?
3. Ego Form now has become just another paranormal passive. Seraphim buffs healing and HoT, Shadow Form provides some stealth and minor (very minor) HoT. What should Ego Form do? Be more resistant to dmg? Provide it's own buff to crit chance? Ego Form needs to have it's own adv over the other paranormal passives.
I hope we can also talk about this as well, which these topics could potentially benefit the Mentalist framework.
Definately. I would see this being more beneficial to the set if its advantage had a laser-knight esque advantage. Would help the melee side of the set with its squishy problem a bit more, thats for sure.
Very good questions. I'd really like to see Ego Form be given some
Alright, alright...the Dex/Ego thing is clearly the big mammajamma change here, and with Ame's examples I can see where Cryptic was headed. I see that the changes are supposed to make each stat stand on their own, but the main point, I figure, is that you've got a lot of players who're looking at the changes and seeing that they've got to build considerable levels of Ego in order to reach critical chances they're used to getting from nothing more than reasonable Dex. Like I said earlier, it just sorta makes me feel like I have to do DEX/EGO Superstats. Whether or not that's actually true, it's the impression a lot of players seem to be getting, and ye guys might want to do something to avert that.
Insofar as the changes to the stats alone are concerned...alright. Not sure I like Dexterity losing ten percent total effectiveness, but I don't think that really applies anyways. The math doesn't really work out that way, not with the modified functionality of the stat. I suppose it's just a case of people being distressed when they see their crit chance take a giant, largely unrecoverable nose-dive, increased severity or otherwise, if they run Dex without also running Ego. Kinda like..."where mah numbers go? T_T"
P.S. - Thanks for confirming that Ego Blade Dash is getting some manner of advantage. That has been bothering me more than it rightly should, considering that I don't have any sort of mentalist, melee or otherwise, on Live.
Failing making it more defensive, just give it some more damage, +severity or +crit or something, if you're gonna be stuck as a glass cannon you mine as well be a glass cannon right?
(I personally like the latter choice, I really, really miss my 10k+10k Ego blade breeches. >.>)
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. People are jumping to conclusions and getting all flustered over seeing a 5-7% drop in their crit % without seeing the big picture -- that any damage loss is less than 2% and in many cases your damage goes up. Even if you depend upon crits for energy statistically speaking you're still going to crit enough to keep proccing your energy unlock every 3 seconds.
But it's difficult to get people to see beyond the number shock. Hell, I did the same thing until I ran the numbers and saw there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
-Or if everyone is really hellbent on making it less squishier give it a damage reflection buff that negates a portion of the damage you receive and redirects it back at whoever damages you.(a bit like the dual blade Eye of the Storm power) -Or better yet give both suggestions to Ego Form and make one or the other a custom advantage.
As for the dex/ego stat change, why not just slightly increase the base crit/severity scaling? That would tone down most people not happy with the current change, but on the other hand it would also be a nice buff for Dex/Ego superstatters. It's a good silver lining that I can live with honestly.
Also, I don't know what the math is but with a 30% crit chance I'm not seeing 3 attacks in 10 getting crits. I see more like 3 or 4 attacks in 20 or 25 getting crits. Maybe its just my recurring bad luck with the RNG but it is part of the reason that I rarely make crit dependent builds.
But now not only Ego will still need Dex but Dex now also will need Ego.
The Build with 250 Dex and 100 Ego is maybe what at the moment most of the people run, because you have
your 30+ crit chance and a fair severity but you don't need to superstat Ego and can go for Int, Con, Str or whatever.
With these changes it doesn't make much sense anymore to superstat one of them without the other.
You should really see that you balance at least the 200+ Dex and 100+ Ego Setup that it has the same crit chance
than on Live.
As for the arguments to improve the cannon rather than armor the glass...great for PvP, but using the set in PvE requires a certain minimum level of survivability. You can get that out-set if ye like - just strapping on laser Knight and Inertial Dampening Field does wonders for the TK Blade builds, anyways - but I figured it'd be nice if we could see more offensive passives take their cue from Quarry. The only two offensive passives I can really let myself use anymore are Quarry and Unstoppable - Quarry for its flexibility and defensive benefits, Unstoppable for its monstrous energy regain on knock with Super Rec. Everything else has kinda been devoured by Primal Rage.
Damage is pretty easy to come by for most offensive passive builds; secondary effects such as improved defense or energy are significantly less so.
Adjusting the energy returns on powers like Killer Instinct and Form of the Tempest a little to compensate would help some of these that are running around 200 DEX and 100 EGO (mostly DEX/INT Quarry builds), but one of such characters was using DEX without EGO to power Form of the Tempest and he saw a drop from 25% crit chance to 17%. That's a huge difference to a character that wasn't top of the pack at anything but beating up VIPER, and I basically would have to rework my entire build (again) to make it work the same under the new system.
Thanks for writing out these calculations, I understand and agree with your point that it only amounts to a minor nerf to the total damage increase critchance*critsev. Assuming an unlimited supply of energy, long-term average DPS is the same as it was before. (if we stipulate that Dex + Ego = 600 and maximize total damage = critchance*critsev, the Live maximum bonus is 32.8% at dex = 318 and ego = 282, on test its 32.8% at Dex = 262 and ego = 338). Making the optimal values of Dex lower does cause a big effect when we consider synergy as I describe below.
Your absolutely right here, and I think these considerations are important. Killer Instinct and Archer's Instinct don't need this nerf, a solution would be to slightly raise the energy gain per proc on those two powers.
Martial arts forms are also nerfed by this change, not just because the energy procs on crit, but the amount of energy returned scales with Dex, and so the changes on PTS that favor most of us reducing Dex a bit and increasing Ego will lower the energy return per proc. Lower Dex also means less energy from rush, so these changes amount to a triple nerf for martial arts forms: they proc less often, they give less energy at the now lower optimal Dex values, and rush gives less energy at the new lower optimal Dex values.
On live, Dex boosts everything about martial artists, the damage bonus from their forms, the energy return from forms and rush, and the dodge bonus from parry are all tied to Dex. Forcing martial artists to take less Dex and more Ego to achieve their current critchance*critsev bonus adds up to a major nerf to MA for all these reasons.
I've checked crit rates on many powers by killing dozens of test dummies while running /combatlog , then using a script to parse the results and see what fraction of the hits crit. I haven't found any anomalies while doing this, the results always eventually tend to the crit rate listed on the character sheet.
I did it to test claims of crit rate scaling with charge time, or claims like "chainsaw crits a lot", but haven't found any statistically reproducible anomalies of this kind.
I still think Ego needs a reliable way to do something for energy with the crit-dependent sets (Munitions/Archery). Having to rely on the RNG to get an energy return is bad enough, but having it be tied to doing damage is even worse. The reason why people take Form of the Tempest with Muni or MSA with Archery is because energy unlocks based on crit are self-defeating and unreliable. You need to either double-stack them (Killer Instinct or Hunter's Instinct with FotT) or stack them with a more reliable energy source (self-affecting cooldowns/short cooldown attacks with MSA).
Ego form needs some sort of survivability, as has been mentioned. And in general, Ego (the stat) needs to add something to survivability. Int gives you shorter cooldowns on active defenses and cheaper heals. End gives you more energy for self healing. Ego...makes you do more damage so you take more aggro so you need more defense because you're still not doing "enough" more damage to wipe out the threatening things before they roflstomp you. It's a bad cycle. The ranged knockback is nice, but it's bad because it competes with the energy stats you need to fuel most of the good ranged knockbacks.
As a benchmark...try comparing the survivability of a Dex/Ego character without using Quarry, WotW or a defensive passive to any offensive build with different superstats. About the only one that has the potential to be worse is Rec/End, and even that can be mitigated with use of Support Drones and MR (it has more energy to deal with the increased energy cost, and MR's bubble pop energy return scales on Rec).
Dex/Ego locks you into being a "damage dealer", but you don't have the energy to do truly sustainable damage, you don't have the build flexibility to gain the survivability other superstat combos have, and you don't do "enough" more damage to make it worth being a one-trick pony that can only use its trick between energy builder shots.
Though part of the above is because Str + Enrage is usually better for damage than even full Dex/Ego, because it's more controllable and still leaves room for a survivability or energy boosting superstat (and cries out for one, as you'll need either Con or Int to maintain the stacks).
I think the changes are a good starting point, but until I can honestly suggest Dex/Ego as a superstat combo for someone who wants to be a "damage dealer" without feeling guilty about misleading them, I don't quite think it's enough.
I haven't yet made a suggestion as to how to "fix" this because I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't involve either a nerf to Enrage or turning Ego into a hybrid energy stat. Though I think the latter's probably going to be the way to go.
Maybe have it innately give a stacking cost reduction that builds with any critical hit and slowly falls off? Dunno if the tech exists to do such a thing, though.
I agree that improving EGO's scaling, along with returning hold resistance, returns it to viability as a superstat.
I still see a second issue in that DEX/EGO is much better as a melee stat than a ranged stat. In contrast, because of the quality of Enrage and Imbue, STR/CON/INT fits oddly well to most ranged builds. And because Enraged is easier to maintain/build with Defiance and AoPM, ranged offensive passives are rarely an optimal choice. Add in the Warhead Defiance cheat, and that becomes never. I'd like to see a toggle for both ranged and melee that scales with superstats, but has half the damage bonus of the MA toggles. Or an enraged equivalent that scales with superstats, gives half the damage bonus of enraged, but gets double stacks from offensive forms.
Do a good job guys, looking forward to the live patch.
I have a hive of villainy to return to.
Would it be too much to ask that the melee portion of discipline buff all melee? (In addition to it gaining a ranged tk buff)
It just seems like it would be nice to get the full mileage out of a new form by making it universally usable for all melee. That way it would be a good buff for TK but also give all melee some new options.
For example:
if i superstated Ego but not Dex and took discipline on any melee toon i would still come out with a nice dmg buff/crit chance and have the flexibility to go with a super stat that buffs survivability or energy gain.
There is no real incentive here to have 100 points in either ego or dex. Perhaps we are expected to follow the path of least resistance and just dump 300 points into our superstats and ignore everything else, but that's not very fun. Con/End/Rec get a perfectly reasonable benefit for putting a small amount into them, and Dex and Ego haven't, don't and apparently won't ever. I'm curious why half the stats are scaled to be worthless unless they are your superstats, while others have completely flat scaling. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and it very much detracts from creativity in character design.
Crit Chance = 0.52(1-1/(1+(dex/200)^2))
Crit Severity = .741 Sqrt(ego/200)
Damage bonus % = 100*(Crit Chance)*(Crit Severity)
For the calculations of the PTS version, I use 0.7dex + 0.3 ego instead of Dex for computing crit chance, and use 0.2 dex + 0.8 ego instead of ego for computing crit severity. I checked that these formula produce the same values as Ame gives, within rounding error.
So maximizing the Damage bonus on Live looks like this:
Dex + Ego.............Optimal Damage Bonus %............Optimal Dex...........Optimal Ego
......200......................................7............................................145..............................55...
......300.....................................13.6........................................200.............................100...
......400.....................................20.4........................................246.............................154...
......500.....................................26.8........................................285.............................215...
......600.....................................33...........................................318.............................282...
......700.....................................38...........................................348.............................352...
And on PTS it looks like this:
Dex + Ego..........Optimal Damage Bonus %............Optimal Dex....Optimal Ego
....200................................ 6....................................................160......................40........
....300................................12.5................................................209......................91........
....400................................19.5................................................240.....................160.......
....500................................26.3................................................257.....................243......
....600................................32.8................................................262.....................338......
....700................................39...................................................258.....................442......
Comments:
1. When Dex + Ego is 400 or less, the optimal damage bonus on Live is bigger than on PTS, but never by more than 1%. Still that's a considerably wider range of straight nerfing than seen in Ame's post.
2. When Dex + Ego is 300 or less, the optimum for Ego is less than it is on Live, kind of a surprise.
3. It seems that Dex values above ~260 are never optimal from the point of view of maximizing the damage bonus of the crit layer. Once Dex is at 260, it's always optimal to increase Ego (a big new conflict for the Dex based synergies found in martial arts). Contrast the situation on live, optimal {Dex,Ego} values increase more symmetrically on the high end.
4. Finally, though it's obvious at this point, overall the above charts demonstrate a shift in emphasis from Dex to Ego on the medium to high end of stats. Look at the change on the line Dex + Ego = 600, a realistic total for a Dex/Ego superstat character, the roles of Dex and Ego have been nearly reversed.
On live, I play a martial arts characters with 420-460 Dex (primal majesty aura). This Dex scales my focus of the unleashed tempest damage bonus, energy gain, rush from Dragon's Claws, and dodge rating from parry. The relative shift in emphasis from Dex to Ego is a definite nerf for this build. The build performs above baseline, that's true, but the Str/Con/Int builds are already stronger than the Dex/Ego/Con/Int builds for a couple of reasons, and the net result of all these changes is to put Dex builds further behind Str builds.
New powers don't seem to count towards getting the t4.
Live: 37.3% Crit -- 85.2% Severity
PTS: 36.2% Crit -- 87.0% Severity
Throw that on the hold resistance; can't rightly say I'm disappointed.
Happy tank has a happy.
This idea of making Ego a hybrid energy stat is what I think is a better solution as well.
I don't think it's ideal, but my first thought was to make is a reverse version of Intelligence, that is it would [along with Crit Severity, hold resistance and ranged knock scaling] give a boost to maximum energy and Equilibrium at about one third the value of Recovery and Endurance alone.
At face value this seems like it would be a very valuable set of things to have in a single stat, at 240 ish Ego [super stating it] you'd gain Crit Severity, Hold Resist, Ranged knock buff and the equivalent of + 80 energy and + 80 recovery worth of equilibrium...
I think this would even make Int-Ego a pretty good stat combo.