It's just Enrage being kinda overpowered. 300 Str/Con (Enrage) is about 5% more damage than 300 Dex/Ego on a build with an offensive passive, and about 25% more on a build with a defensive passive. In melee, Dex builds can use Forms.
It gets even more skewed when you add Aggressor on top of Enrage, something Form users can't do.
Saying "EGO and REC are competitive stat choices now" is an absoute threshold. I'm saying EGO and REC are better than they were. I'll accept movment in a desirable direction as good even if its not all the way to the imaginary finish line in a single leap.
I agree that any move that makes EGO more desirable is a move in the rite direction. I also understand that the review is far from over.
However, i feel like this Dev stated goal can NOT be achieved
Its my understanding that our responsibility as testers is to continue to provide feedback until the full scope of the desired changes are complete and if we don't, we run the risk of having something incomplete pushed live.(we already got a taste of that last week and i don't think that's what any one wants)
If any one wants to make the case that EGO is a competitive standalone stat as it exists now, i would love to hear it.
Its my understanding that our responsibility as testers is to continue to provide feedback until the full scope of the desired changes are complete and if we don't, we run the risk of having something incomplete pushed live.(we already got a taste of that last week and i don't think that's what any one wants)
Yes, but it's important that we back up our findings with real data, not just knee-jerk reactions.
Will 95+% of the playerbase notice a difference? Unlikely. And any difference they may notice is likely to be mitigated by some gear swapping.
If this is the outcome of the stat review then i what was the point?
If the players dont say "wow the EGO stat has its own legs now, im going to repecec into it or build a new toon around it" then nothing significant has changed
[im going to resist throwing a political metaphor in here]
Why are we sitting here and debating over something that "95% of the playerbase wont notice" and the rest of the average playerbase will interpret as a nerf (regardless of what the numbers say)
If your going to change EGO then CHANGE IT and make it a real stat don't just siphon some usefulness off of another stat as a crutch and call it "fixt".
I'm more than willing to accept a nerf in DEX if the result is meaningful buff to a stat and the new build options that i expect to come with a new stat. Any thing less is a waste of time and will unnecessarily ruffle a lot of feathers...
If this is the outcome of the stat review then i what was the point?
If the players dont say "wow the EGO stat has its own legs now, im going to repecec into it or build a new toon around it" then nothing significant has changed
[im going to resist throwing a political metaphor in here]
Why are we sitting here and debating over something that "95% of the playerbase wont notice" and the rest of the average playerbase will interpret as a nerf (regardless of what the numbers say)
If your going to change EGO then CHANGE IT and make it a real stat don't just siphon some usefulness off of another stat as a crutch and call it "fixt".
I'm more than willing to accept a nerf in DEX if the result is meaningful buff to a stat and the new build options that i expect to come with a new stat. Any thing less is a waste of time and will unnecessarily ruffle a lot of feathers...
Won't notice a difference in their character's performance. There are clear exceptions, like Force users who stat up STR and will now want EGO instead, but that's not the people we're talking about. We're talking about those that insist the changes to DEX and EGO are going to gimp/ruin/nerf/hamstring/break their toons by a significant margin due to a reduction in energy procs and focus stacking due to a lower crit %.
Honestly, I don't know why you're debating it either.
And the changes to EGO will have a significant impact on those who take it without DEX. They will gain ranged KB strength, mez resistance, and a damage buff from crits.
Xavori? Pants? (and anyone else into hard numbers )
Could you guys try to look at the Rating-to-crit-chance-% tables for Live vs. Test? I think there is an undocumented change in the curve and that may be (badly) obscuring some of the other analysis.
It's not an undocumented change, it's a confusing change -- basically, on Live you're seeing the bonus for Crit Rating (Dex) going from 0 to 53. On Test, you're seeing the bonus for Crit Rating going from 60 (0.3 * Ego) to 96 (0.3 * ego + 0.7 * dex).
Yes, but it's important that we back up our findings with real data, not just knee-jerk reactions.
Ok, if im knee-jerk reacting then please post some EGO/[non-dex] builds that are made posible by these changes. I have been asking for someone to post "real data" viable EGO focused non dex builds repeatedly for the last several posts and nobody has responded. Maybe your up for the challenge?
EGO/PRE, EGO/INT, EGO/CON, EGO/END if you or any one else shows me builds i will be satisfied and you want hear another peep from me.
Until then, i would say that my concerns are not "knee-jerk" but justified.
I'm pretty sure I have stopped and thought about it, thanks.
Unless there is an actual hard cap on DEX critical gains, as in it stops at say 260-ish, then yes.. the one thing you can pull away from this is that you will require more DEX than before to have the same crit chance. Which means everything depending on criticals, from heals to damage to procs of Focus from Form of the Tempest, are going to receive a 5% proc chance nerf in the high end the moment this goes Live unless they already have a pile of EGO to go with it.
Damage, technically, is going to be increased for people who superstat DEX but do not have significant EGO as they will now receive bonus critical severity from their DEX stat where they never had it before. Albeit, this comes at a loss of roughly 10-15% of their current critical strike chance, forever ruining (other people's terminology, not mine) builds that depend on critical strikes but didn't take EGO to get rolling.
Did I miss anything?
Numbers/spreadsheet results posted in this thread seem to contradict your position that Dex/Non Ego SS characters are getting a damage buff. Checking my own Dex/Int Archers numbers I can confirm that that character's supreme OP'ness has been scaled back : )
Something that is being overlooked IMO is the significantly different affect on gameplay between critical hit frequency and critical hit magnitude. If every fight was a defensive passive hero against
tough bosses then the difference is negated because the fight becomes one of DPS over time. But, a higher crit chance delivers more damage early on, and potentially overall, than a higher severity. This is simply because of the tactic of putting foes down quickly. It doesnt matter if your long term DPS remains the same if you are an offensive passive toon whose survivability relies on defeating your opposition before they can put you down.
Similarly the extra DPS from severity, supposedly to make up for damage lost to a reduction in crit chance, means little if the foes drop before the statistics kick in to even things out.
Ok, if im knee-jerk reacting then please post some EGO/[non-dex] builds that are made posible by these changes. I have been asking for someone to post "real data" viable EGO focused non dex builds repeatedly for the last several posts and nobody has responded. Maybe your up for the challenge?
EGO/PRE, EGO/INT, EGO/CON, EGO/END if you or any one else shows me builds i will be satisfied and you want hear another peep from me.
Until then, i would say that my concerns are not "knee-jerk" but justified.
Are you trying to say that current non-DEX EGO builds aren't possible or viable?
Numbers/spreadsheet results posted in this thread seem to contradict your position that Dex/Non Ego SS characters are getting a damage buff. Checking my own Dex/Int Archers numbers I can confirm that that character's supreme OP'ness has been scaled back : )
Something that is being overlooked IMO is the significantly different affect on gameplay between critical hit frequency and critical hit magnitude. If every fight was a defensive passive hero against
tough bosses then the difference is negated because the fight becomes one of DPS over time. But, a higher crit chance delivers more damage early on, and potentially overall, than a higher severity. This is simply because of the tactic of putting foes down quickly. It doesnt matter if your long term DPS remains the same if you are an offensive passive toon whose survivability relies on defeating your opposition before they can put you down.
Similarly the extra DPS from severity, supposedly to make up for damage lost to a reduction in crit chance, means little if the foes drop before the statistics kick in to even things out.
Well now we're into the age-old debate of "less damage more often" vs. "more damage less often". I don't think anyone's gonna win that argument.
Ok, if im knee-jerk reacting then please post some EGO/[non-dex] builds that are made posible by these changes.
300 ego/10 dex is 9.9% crit/82% severity; net 8% damage bonus.
300 dex/10 ego is 28% crit/43% severity; net 12% damage bonus.
300 dex/300 ego is 36% crit/91% severity; net 32% damage bonus.
Honestly, both superstats by themselves (i.e. without the other) are atrocious, though it's better than live (where the bonuses are 0.11% for the ego build, 5.9% for the dex build).
Ok, if im knee-jerk reacting then please post some EGO/[non-dex] builds that are made posible by these changes. I have been asking for someone to post "real data" viable EGO focused non dex builds repeatedly for the last several posts and nobody has responded. Maybe your up for the challenge?
EGO/PRE, EGO/INT, EGO/CON, EGO/END if you or any one else shows me builds i will be satisfied and you want hear another peep from me.
Until then, i would say that my concerns are not "knee-jerk" but justified.
INT/EGO Quarry with CON, STR should be good. Assuming Incisive Wit still boosts crit chance, you could use Ego Surge, Lock and Load and Imbue to keep crits going. Primary defense gear would be CON, primary offense gear would be STR. That should allow Enrage to be valuable. I guess the build would be either Force (for the crazy ranged kb) or Munitions, maybe with one of the solid muni Power Replacers.
edit: but I'm not saying you're "knee-jerk reacting". I just like posting builds...
If non-dex ego based builds are currently fine then this change to ego wasnt needed for them. His question was, what new builds are made possible ?
Personally, regarding current non-dex ego builds, with very few exceptions I believe that those builds would be better off with something other than ego SS.
If you are relying on Force Sheath or Prot field for energy management then Ego has merit without dex, but even so Ive had better results with Int SS and some ego from gear). If someone chooses to not partake of the multitude of energy management set ups available and instead opts to rely on blocking for energy gain Ego helps make up for the self gimp.
It's just Enrage being kinda overpowered. 300 Str/Con (Enrage) is about 5% more damage than 300 Dex/Ego on a build with an offensive passive, and about 25% more on a build with a defensive passive. In melee, Dex builds can use Forms.
I know I'm going to regret this one, but here it goes...
Maybe they should be looking at lowering/tweaking enrage's str scaling, or just the power enrage in general, then?
Are you trying to say that current non-DEX EGO builds aren't possible or viable?
You can pick any stat combination and lv to 40 if you set your mind to it.
Possible? any thing is doable in this game.
Viable? i would say no but that's a statement of opinion and depends on who you ask.
Competitive with more traditional stat combinations? no not before these changes and (to my knowledge) not after.
I want the stat changes to give me new options, not rearrange the options i already have. I'm not saying that EGO hasn't improved but that it hasn't improved enough to justify these changes or to create any significant hero building changes.
I'm trying to say that build options should significantly expand with the addition of another viable standalone stat.
I'm trying to say that i don't see too many people taking EGO after the change that wernt taking it any way (except to exchange str fro ego to knock which is only a slight surface change).
I'm trying to say that if there are these grate new EGO builds that are made possible by these changes then i haven't seen them.
INT/EGO Quarry with CON, STR should be good. Assuming Incisive Wit still boosts crit chance, you could use Ego Surge, Lock and Load and Imbue to keep crits going. Primary defense gear would be CON, primary offense gear would be STR. That should allow Enrage to be valuable. I guess the build would be either Force (for the crazy ranged kb) or Munitions, maybe with one of the solid muni Power Replacers.
edit: but I'm not saying you're "knee-jerk reacting". I just like posting builds...
Well now we're into the age-old debate of "less damage more often" vs. "more damage less often". I don't think anyone's gonna win that argument.
Well I dont honestly know about that debate, but as someone who playe offensive characters (almost) exclusively (in every game I have played) I can assure you that letting the bad guys live longer reduces survivability.
Mathematically shifting from chance to severity only keeps damage the same when measured over a longer period of time. A character that relies on defeating foes before they have time to do the same to him, offensive passive characters in this game, are reduced in effectiveness by such a shift.
Disclaimer: In a team environment, while facing a boss, with a tank to prevent the squishy offensive character from being targeted, dps over time is more valid for an offensive passive toon.
Getting the crit to finish off a group of mobs a quarter second after they defeated you, because your crit chance is reduced, does an offensive passive character no good.
Im not arguing that a higher crit chance/lower severity is universally better than the reverse. What I am saying is that each approach is particularly suited to a different playstyle. By changing the formula to favor defensive passives, which are already superior to offensive passives, the offensive playstyle/spec is reduced.
Has anyone ever brought up allowing the damage bonus from strength (and ego by extension) to go past the current cap of 20%? To me, it seems like it would make both stats more attractive as superstats on their own. Maybe 50% at 200 to be comparable to 20% at 70.
This could make the difference between Focus and Enrage melee builds more substantial: crits and crazy energy from Rush or obscene damage potential?
Im not arguing that a higher crit chance/lower severity is universally better than the reverse.
But that's exactly what you're arguing; that reducing crit % and increasing severity hampers offensive characters because they can't kill as quickly despite DPS over time being the same. Which is why I bought up the "less damage more often" debate, cause that's essentially what you're saying, that less damage more often (more crits for less severity) is better for offensive characters than more damage less often (less crits but higher severity). Which, as I mentioned, is a debate you nor anyone else is likely to ever win.
Just so you can stop going around in circles about the current set of stat data, I'm letting you know that our next PTS push will have updated Dex/Ego crit contributions. Basically, our first pass checked for larger numbers of stats, and we hadn't examined lower numbers enough. After examining them more (and as commented on from several players in this thread) we realized it did things we weren't happy with.
Also, part of the goal with the first pass was to make Ego better, but not make combining Ego with Dex better, because we were concerned about pushing crit too high. This was a mistake, and limited our ability to actually make Ego better (since if Ego is a better stat all around, shouldn't it also be better when combined with Dex, not just with other stats?). Anyhow, we modified the contributions from each stat to crit chance/severity. It now looks like this:
With the previous PTS push, if you had equal numbers of Dex and Ego, your Crit stats would be unchanged from Live. With the new version, if you have equal amounts of Dex and Ego, you will be getting a buff. As an example - if you have 250 Dex and Ego, on Live your numbers are 31.7% Crit and 82.9% Severity. Your new PTS numbers would instead be 36% Crit and 87% Severity.
If you had 300 Dex and 10 Ego, on Live your crit stats were 36% Crit, 16.6% Severity. Now it will be 33.8% Crit and 43.6% Severity.
Similarly, the crit severity rates for Ego will go up because of this. We should have a new PTS build soon that will have these changes and more.
Also, some people started talking about Enrage... That's a big issue to tackle, and not something we're going to be looking at with this round of changes.
Overall crits are better with this build, but the same stat anomaly (which is also present on live) remains: your optimal build is to focus first on dex, then shift over to ego. I also list 'stat efficiency', which is the damage bonus divided by the total attribute points spent; as we can see, stat efficiency is significantly reduced below around 300 total points spent on the two stats, and is nearly flat over the 500-800 stat points spent range. I don't really think that's how diminishing returns were intended to work (this flaw is equally present on Live, of course).
Second of all, to address some points I've seen people bring up...[ramble mode activate]
After my initial alarm over the stat changes, I actually tested a few different EGO/INT setups with the new TK fixes in the test shard, on the logic that the best test of whether Cryptic had made Ego a standalone stat was to take them at their word, treat it like one, and see what I got. I ran EGO/INT Mentalist builds, both TK blade and general ranged, stacking the new Ego Leech mechanics with Super Intelligence to push energy costs for Mentalist powers as low as I could and check for viability. I figured that with Super Intelligence being as awesome as it was, and with Ego Leech making that Intelligence cost reduction even more epic, I was about as set as I ever was to make use of my newly, happily stand-alone Ego.
...yeah.
First of all, gearing Int/Ego, by default, sucks as much as gearing Int/End does. Second of all, if ye want numbers, just skip this post entirely. I don't have hard numbers, which will probably completely invalidate this entire post, but I can tell you guys that I pretty much ended up on the floor bleeding any time I fought sufficiently strong/numerous enemies as to require any sort of competence or optimization to defeat. With an offensive mindset, anyways. Ego's standalone critical ability, while certainly improved, was not enough improved to stand without Dexterity as a means of increasing damage. What turned out to be more important was the additional control from ranged knocks in my ranged and hybrid tests - Super Ego's new knock scaling with TK Wave is great. However, the TK Blade attempts were laughable. In my tests, which admittedly were more about gut feeling and direct observation than math or number-crunching, DEX/EGO outperformed INT/EGO, which I felt to be the next most viable combination for the TK builds I was testing, in just about every meaningful way insofar as damage went.
As I said, the ranged versions did better, but that was due to factors completely independent of the critical adjustments. TK Wave sending enemies to Bermuda was far more important to that build than the occasional juicy crit. The hybrid Blade/ranged builds I rigged up, trying to see if TK could work as a psychic version of the MA/Munitions character which is my current main, only did well when it basically ignored its melee attacks entirely and focused on controller-style gameplay with knocks from TK Burst and TK Wave. Which...suddenly reminded me of how an Impulse-style character is supposed to live. With that in mind, and some reasonable tweaks later, I had the combination working acceptably as a controller - acceptably, if not spectacularly.
In this regard, Ego is a 'standalone' stat as much as Strength is, provided one forgets that Enrage scales with Strength. Strength boosts knock resistance, melee knock strength, and physical melee damage; Ego boosts mez resistance, ranged knock strength, TK melee damage, and also provides heavy critical damage. In that respect, when stats are considered in isolation of skills, Ego is actually one of the strongest stats around at the moment given that it provides a larger number of useful benefits than any other stat, one of them quite considerable.
The problem, now that I've tested crap and rambled my way through data and experience, isn't with Ego vampiring off some of Dex's crit chance, or with the whole critical thing in general. That's a side issue, albeit a pressing one. It's that nothing useful scales with Ego, whatsoever. Strength scales Enrage, and Enrage is broke as hell, thus Strength is also the next best thing to broke as hell. MA Forms scale primarily with Dexterity, and MA forms are very nearly competitive with Enrage in terms of damage (for melee anyway), and so Dex is considered a top-end stat. Ego...scales a couple of less-than-useful energy unlocks and minor energy returns from a couple of Force skills. Wowee.
In this respect, people are more concerned with a stat that scales useful skills being whacked in exchange for aiding a stat that scales bupkis. Given that Ego competes with Intelligence, which has one of the most useful intrinsic effects in the game as well as scaling the outrageously useful Molecular Self-Assembly, it's not going to be seen as anything but a junk stat until it gets something that it, personally, can juice up which actually matters.
That's what needs to happen, not any of the muss and fuss over critical rates and energy gain. People don't want to drop the stat that scales the damage from their Form of the Tempest in exchange for the stat which scales how much energy return they get from their Force Sheath. The one is staggeringly more important than the other, and for all of Ego's value to a controller build, as long as it's perceived as an 'attacking' stat focusing mainly on criticals which scales...nada...it's GOING to be a junk stat.
Don't the crit-based energy unlocks have internal cool-downs that will smooth over a lot of the "nerf" of a crit rate reduced by 5% or so? To rephrase, the effect of a higher crit rate with these powers is to get that energy tick as soon after the internal cool-down expires as possible. A 5% change in crit-rate does not equal a 5% change in energy returns from these powers.
On top of that, for the Instinct powers, because the energy returned scales of Ego, bumping up your Ego will now increase your crit chance as well as the amount of energy returned. You will not need to get your crit chance back to where it was in order to get your energy return back to where it was.
And how am i supposed to "bump up my Ego"? Which of my talents that I otherwise need for other stats should I sacrifice for more ego or which of the 9 equipment slots that I have very carefully selected for very specific reasons should I swap out for a stat that I had no use for before this? Are they going to give me an extra few talent points to spend or a fourth row of equipment slots?
And how am i supposed to "bump up my Ego"? Which of my talents that I otherwise need for other stats should I sacrifice for more ego or which of the 9 equipment slots that I have very carefully selected for very specific reasons should I swap out for a stat that I had no use for before this? Are they going to give me an extra few talent points to spend or a fourth row of equipment slots?
You're a smart guy. I think if you put your mind to it you could figure it out.
And how am i supposed to "bump up my Ego"? Which of my talents that I otherwise need for other stats should I sacrifice for more ego or which of the 9 equipment slots that I have very carefully selected for very specific reasons should I swap out for a stat that I had no use for before this? Are they going to give me an extra few talent points to spend or a fourth row of equipment slots?
But that's exactly what you're arguing; that reducing crit % and increasing severity hampers offensive characters because they can't kill as quickly despite DPS over time being the same. Which is why I bought up the "less damage more often" debate, cause that's essentially what you're saying, that less damage more often (more crits for less severity) is better for offensive characters than more damage less often (less crits but higher severity). Which, as I mentioned, is a debate you nor anyone else is likely to ever win.
Not at all the case. I am in no way, shape, or form, arguing that higher chance/lower severity is universally better. In fact at least one of my DPS characters (one with higher survivability than norm for me) will come out ahead with reduced chance but increased severity. I am arguing that it is better for characters with lower survivability who need more front loaded, burst, damage than a character with a defensive passive. A change than ensures that a squishy's damage remains the same when measured over 30 seconds, a minute, etc means very little to a character that is designed to win or lose a fight in the first 10-15 seconds.
A good rule of thumb in debate: assume honest intent in your opponent. Take them at their word without trying to force your assumptions onto them. Debate what they say, not what you think they're thinking since more often than not, you have no idea what they're actually thinking.
A better rule of debate is not to feign moral superiority/righteous indignation when somebody makes a perfectly valid observation, either. If you feel the need to get bent out of shape over it, well, seems I've touched a nerve of truth, friend.
When people continue to complain about how their optimal damage builds are no longer optimal because of changes made to game mechanics, invariably a new optimal build is discovered and people adapt and evolve to the new mechanic. The intervening time between the two is nothing more than a mild annoyance at best, while this thread is packed with people crying about how their lives are ruined.
Adapt. The people in he thread who are exploring the math behind the new stat mechanics and making positive suggestions on how best to implement them in builds? That's the right idea and I applaud it.
I don't even understand how someone would begin to argue that higher damage over time is superior to burst damage for a squishy.
Of course, Captain snark isn't trying to argue that, he's trying to dismiss the argument without having it by claiming that the argument has no clear answer. I'm pretty sure legions of squishies have answered the question for themselves, otherwise we'd see them all sporting hard frost and eye beams instead of force cascade and gigabolt.
The first time I ran serpent lantern with my squishy ego blader I killed the last boss without seeing his super attack. Didn't even know he had it. Later when I went back with a tougher, but less burst-damagy character I was in for a rude surprise.
Needless to say, where my tougher character was only hurt badly, my ego blader would have been dead. But he wasn't. Because of front loaded damage.
Overall crits are better with this build, but the same stat anomaly (which is also present on live) remains: your optimal build is to focus first on dex, then shift over to ego. I also list 'stat efficiency', which is the damage bonus divided by the total attribute points spent; as we can see, stat efficiency is significantly reduced below around 300 total points spent on the two stats, and is nearly flat over the 500-800 stat points spent range. I don't really think that's how diminishing returns were intended to work (this flaw is equally present on Live, of course).
The concern still is that optimum crits are at lower Dex. Unless MA Forms and archery/muni Instincts get tweaked, that means its still a nerf to to a whole lot of toons. At least now, though, it's a smaller problem than before.
Oh, and it makes it really easy to build DEX based toons not using MA forms. Just get to ~250 DEX and stop
(MA Form users...ya...that's going to be a pain to find the sweet spot)
I don't even understand how someone would begin to argue that higher damage over time is superior to burst damage for a squishy.
Of course, Captain snark isn't trying to argue that, he's trying to dismiss the argument without having it by claiming that the argument has no clear answer. I'm pretty sure legions of squishies have answered the question for themselves, otherwise we'd see them all sporting hard frost and eye beams instead of force cascade and gigabolt.
The first time I ran serpent lantern with my squishy ego blader I killed the last boss without seeing his super attack. Didn't even know he had it. Later when I went back with a tougher, but less burst-damagy character I was in for a rude surprise.
Needless to say, where my tougher character was only hurt badly, my ego blader would have been dead. But he wasn't. Because of front loaded damage.
Have you met my toons Anne Thraxx (T4), Cassandra(T3), or Ol' BIll(T2). They are all sustained DPS squishies. Heck, two of them are pesti toons which means really, really squishy. All three of them have ridiculously high kill-per-match numbers in PvP which for you non-PvP types means they are really deadly. My archery toon is another sustained DPS toon ('course, it's not like archery has any choice in the matter). At the extreme of sustained DPS, I have a telepath who can kill tanks...as long as the tank doesn't run away. And they will run away because they prolly aren't going to kill her.
Oh, and the telepath is PRE/EGO because when I built her I just had to try out Mind Link in PvP and it scales to EGO. After a dozen stronghold matches, I decided committing suicide to maybe do 2000 points per tick of damage or maybe doing 1 point per tick of damage or anything in between just wasn't a really good idea.
p.s. Mind Link really does encourage suicide. If it proc's off damage to you, it proc's off the damage you take, not the incoming damage. So if you do anything to mitigate damage, Mind Link hits for less. If we hadn't gotten off on the whole stat thing, I was going to push to get it looked at as part of the TK pass since Mind Link is available to TK users.
The first time I ran serpent lantern with my squishy ego blader I killed the last boss without seeing his super attack. Didn't even know he had it. Later when I went back with a tougher, but less burst-damagy character I was in for a rude surprise.
I had the same exact experience with my TK blader.
The concern still is that optimum crits are at lower Dex. Unless MA Forms and archery/muni Instincts get tweaked, that means its still a nerf to to a whole lot of toons. At least now, though, it's a smaller problem than before.
Oh, and it makes it really easy to build DEX based toons not using MA forms. Just get to ~250 DEX and stop
(MA Form users...ya...that's going to be a pain to find the sweet spot)
At least now most builds will be getting a slight to moderate buff to critical chance and critical severity using the same Dex and Ego values they have on live, so our MA characters can keep the same stats they have now and enjoy higher DPS, so I can't complain. True we'll have to live with not optimizing critical layer damage bonus for the sake of our synergies, but at least we won't be getting nerfed.
With the latest version of the changes everyone with .33*ego > .1*dex gets a buff to their critical chance, so e.g. a character with 320 dex and 120 ego gets a buff to critical chance and critical severity (almost everyone gets a buff to their severity).
Thanks for listening to us Ame, I think this was a great direction to choose.
Have you met my toons Anne Thraxx (T4), Cassandra(T3), or Ol' BIll(T2). They are all sustained DPS squishies. Heck, two of them are pesti toons which means really, really squishy. All three of them have ridiculously high kill-per-match numbers in PvP which for you non-PvP types means they are really deadly. My archery toon is another sustained DPS toon ('course, it's not like archery has any choice in the matter). At the extreme of sustained DPS, I have a telepath who can kill tanks...as long as the tank doesn't run away. And they will run away because they prolly aren't going to kill her.
Oh, and the telepath is PRE/EGO because when I built her I just had to try out Mind Link in PvP and it scales to EGO. After a dozen stronghold matches, I decided committing suicide to maybe do 2000 points per tick of damage or maybe doing 1 point per tick of damage or anything in between just wasn't a really good idea.
p.s. Mind Link really does encourage suicide. If it proc's off damage to you, it proc's off the damage you take, not the incoming damage. So if you do anything to mitigate damage, Mind Link hits for less. If we hadn't gotten off on the whole stat thing, I was going to push to get it looked at as part of the TK pass since Mind Link is available to TK users.
You know I tried a sustained dps squish in T2/T3 PvP and he did really well. He doesn't do nearly as well as my other squishies in the PvE game though, which is not to say he can't manage, he just dies more routinely than any of my "get in and get out" characters. My proudest moment was in a UTC match where the opposing teams "strategist" called me out in zone for the rest of her team to target, because she realized the health drain I was putting on her team with R3 Chain Lightning spam (basically free once you factor in ionic Reverb) was what was really killing them. And that character also came out of every match with obscene player kill numbers. But I was only rarely the one who finished anyone off, what I was doing was stressing the resources of the other team and highlighting targets who lacked compensating resources to the more deadly people on my own team.
Why are the two formulae different? What would happen if we had Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.9) + (Dex*0.3) + Critical Severity Rating ?
Space-time rupture?
Paradox?
Zombies?
That would buff Dex and make Ego less important, so it sort of goes counter to the intent of these changes.
I love buffs as much as anyone, but let's not push our luck.
P.S. The formula for turning .9dex +.3ego into critical chance and the formula turning .9ego + .2dex into severity are totally different from each other, so even if it was .9ego + .3dex it wouldn't really be symmetrical.
That would buff Dex and make Ego less important, so it sort of goes counter to the intent of these changes.
I love buffs as much as anyone, but let's not push our luck.
P.S. The formula for turning .9dex +.3ego into critical chance and the formula turning .9ego + .2dex into severity are totally different from each other, so even if it was .9ego + .3dex it wouldn't really be symmetrical.
Gotcha
Thanks for the answer there too! All the formulae make my brain melt. I prefer words over numbers.
I don't even understand how someone would begin to argue that higher damage over time is superior to burst damage for a squishy.
Of course, Captain snark isn't trying to argue that, he's trying to dismiss the argument without having it by claiming that the argument has no clear answer. I'm pretty sure legions of squishies have answered the question for themselves, otherwise we'd see them all sporting hard frost and eye beams instead of force cascade and gigabolt.
The first time I ran serpent lantern with my squishy ego blader I killed the last boss without seeing his super attack. Didn't even know he had it. Later when I went back with a tougher, but less burst-damagy character I was in for a rude surprise.
Needless to say, where my tougher character was only hurt badly, my ego blader would have been dead. But he wasn't. Because of front loaded damage.
And one could site a half dozen other scenarios where front loaded damage would have gotten you killed vs. sustained DPS, for example, unleashing your front-loaded attack, burning all your energy, and NOT killing the bad guy who then repeatedly smacks you back hard while you're trying to block, build up your energy, and then charge your big hitter (provided you don't get knocked around while charging, breaking the attack). Like I've said twice now, there is no winner in this debate. It all depends on the situation.
You know I tried a sustained dps squish in T2/T3 PvP and he did really well. He doesn't do nearly as well as my other squishies in the PvE game though, which is not to say he can't manage, he just dies more routinely than any of my "get in and get out" characters. My proudest moment was in a UTC match where the opposing teams "strategist" called me out in zone for the rest of her team to target, because she realized the health drain I was putting on her team with R3 Chain Lightning spam (basically free once you factor in ionic Reverb) was what was really killing them. And that character also came out of every match with obscene player kill numbers. But I was only rarely the one who finished anyone off, what I was doing was stressing the resources of the other team and highlighting targets who lacked compensating resources to the more deadly people on my own team.
We're getting completely off topic here, but since there will be a new patch with new patch notes and a new thread to go with them, what the hey...
If you'd gone lightning arc instead of chain lightning, you'd have been the one killing people. It's easily the highest damage T0 power in the game (although the new TK assault comes close). The downsides are that it self-roots, and it draws a great big bright line back to your toon while painting a huge KILL ME sign over your head.
And, if you just want silliness....build your toon STR/END electric form with enrage. Those already painful lightning arcs will just ruin people.
And one could site a half dozen other scenarios where front loaded damage would have gotten you killed vs. sustained DPS, for example, unleashing your front-loaded attack, burning all your energy, and NOT killing the bad guy who then repeatedly smacks you back hard while you're trying to block, build up your energy, and then charge your big hitter (provided you don't get knocked around while charging, breaking the attack). Like I've said twice now, there is no winner in this debate. It all depends on the situation.
In the example you give the squishy does not benefit from sustained DPS. If the foe survives your burst and counters with damage sufficient to defeat you, then he would survive your sustained DPS at least as long and respond with damage sufficient to defeat you.
A squishy does not benefit from prolonging a fight. Sustained DPS is about damage over a prolonged fight. Purposefully allowing your foe to live longer does a squishy no good whatsoever.
And one could site a half dozen other scenarios where front loaded damage would have gotten you killed vs. sustained DPS, for example, unleashing your front-loaded attack, burning all your energy, and NOT killing the bad guy who then repeatedly smacks you back hard while you're trying to block, build up your energy, and then charge your big hitter (provided you don't get knocked around while charging, breaking the attack). Like I've said twice now, there is no winner in this debate. It all depends on the situation.
This is where your lack of experience with PvP and endgame content shows up.
I'll use my soon-to-be-nerfed force toon, Little Dolly Pwnz-a-Lot (that name is not my fault) as an example.
Dolly can hit 13k force cascades. Ya, that's dead squishy right there. That's dead lots of things right there.
But not Therakiel or any of the supertanks running around in PvP. So if she was built as poorly as the toon you talked about, ya, she'd die.
She's not poorly built. She's also not out of energy, she has a whole mitful of defenses and self-heals, and she can go from WTFBBQ spike damage to tap FC sustained DPS without too much trouble 'tall.
She's been a part of a whole bunch of teams that have taken down Therakiel on elite difficulty while my SG was helping everyone in the SG get his sword unlocked. She's killed her fair share of supertanks. She's a rock solid PvP and PvE toon.
I interpret the formulae to mean your potential crit chance is 20% higher than on Live, and your potential Crit Severity is 10% higher. Or something like that.
We're getting completely off topic here, but since there will be a new patch with new patch notes and a new thread to go with them, what the hey...
If you'd gone lightning arc instead of chain lightning, you'd have been the one killing people. It's easily the highest damage T0 power in the game (although the new TK assault comes close). The downsides are that it self-roots, and it draws a great big bright line back to your toon while painting a huge KILL ME sign over your head.
And, if you just want silliness....build your toon STR/END electric form with enrage. Those already painful lightning arcs will just ruin people.
Oh, and you'd be a sustained damage squishy
This was before the Electricity pass actually, so Lightning Arc would have made the guy kind of sad. I will eventually get back to him at some point and rebuild him.
In the example you give the squishy does not benefit from sustained DPS. If the foe survives your burst and counters with damage sufficient to defeat you, then he would survive your sustained DPS at least as long and respond with damage sufficient to defeat you.
A squishy does not benefit from prolonging a fight. Sustained DPS is about damage over a prolonged fight. Purposefully allowing your foe to live longer does a squishy no good whatsoever.
Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to do more overall sustained damage in-between two burst attacks. Ask any well-built PA. And while a squishy may not benefit from a prolonged fight, it may not always be a disadvantage. Sometimes slow and steady really does win the race. It depends on the character and what you're fighting. There is no right or wrong here. It's all subjective.
This is where your lack of experience with PvP and endgame content shows up.
I'll use my soon-to-be-nerfed force toon, Little Dolly Pwnz-a-Lot (that name is not my fault) as an example.
Dolly can hit 13k force cascades. Ya, that's dead squishy right there. That's dead lots of things right there.
But not Therakiel or any of the supertanks running around in PvP. So if she was built as poorly as the toon you talked about, ya, she'd die.
She's not poorly built. She's also not out of energy, she has a whole mitful of defenses and self-heals, and she can go from WTFBBQ spike damage to tap FC sustained DPS without too much trouble 'tall.
She's been a part of a whole bunch of teams that have taken down Therakiel on elite difficulty while my SG was helping everyone in the SG get his sword unlocked. She's killed her fair share of supertanks. She's a rock solid PvP and PvE toon.
There is more to the game than level 40 raids and PvP. So assuming that everything must be tweaked to benefit only those situations, or that those characters that are the only ones that matter, or are typical characters in typical scenarios is extremely short-sighted. Your elitism is showing again.
Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to do more overall sustained damage in-between two burst attacks. Ask any well-built PA. And while a squishy may not benefit from a prolonged fight, it may not always be a disadvantage. Sometimes slow and steady really does win the race. It depends on the character and what you're fighting. There is no right or wrong here. It's all subjective.
If you have pvped at all in the last 2 months you'll know that squishy toons just get farmed by tanks. Mainly cause a squishy relies on burst which can be easily mitigated by defiance / whatever + any active defense. Then the tank can just slowly grind the squishy down with crowd control while they try to escape. Or some tanks just do low end glass cannon damage while being as tough as Ironclad.
*double post not my fault if it happens, forum goign wonky for me
Comments
It gets even more skewed when you add Aggressor on top of Enrage, something Form users can't do.
However, i feel like this Dev stated goal can NOT be achieved when this goal stated below is has not been achieved:
Its my understanding that our responsibility as testers is to continue to provide feedback until the full scope of the desired changes are complete and if we don't, we run the risk of having something incomplete pushed live.(we already got a taste of that last week and i don't think that's what any one wants)
If any one wants to make the case that EGO is a competitive standalone stat as it exists now, i would love to hear it.
Yes, but it's important that we back up our findings with real data, not just knee-jerk reactions.
If the players dont say "wow the EGO stat has its own legs now, im going to repecec into it or build a new toon around it" then nothing significant has changed
[im going to resist throwing a political metaphor in here]
Why are we sitting here and debating over something that "95% of the playerbase wont notice" and the rest of the average playerbase will interpret as a nerf (regardless of what the numbers say)
If your going to change EGO then CHANGE IT and make it a real stat don't just siphon some usefulness off of another stat as a crutch and call it "fixt".
I'm more than willing to accept a nerf in DEX if the result is meaningful buff to a stat and the new build options that i expect to come with a new stat. Any thing less is a waste of time and will unnecessarily ruffle a lot of feathers...
Won't notice a difference in their character's performance. There are clear exceptions, like Force users who stat up STR and will now want EGO instead, but that's not the people we're talking about. We're talking about those that insist the changes to DEX and EGO are going to gimp/ruin/nerf/hamstring/break their toons by a significant margin due to a reduction in energy procs and focus stacking due to a lower crit %.
Honestly, I don't know why you're debating it either.
And the changes to EGO will have a significant impact on those who take it without DEX. They will gain ranged KB strength, mez resistance, and a damage buff from crits.
Ok, if im knee-jerk reacting then please post some EGO/[non-dex] builds that are made posible by these changes. I have been asking for someone to post "real data" viable EGO focused non dex builds repeatedly for the last several posts and nobody has responded. Maybe your up for the challenge?
EGO/PRE, EGO/INT, EGO/CON, EGO/END if you or any one else shows me builds i will be satisfied and you want hear another peep from me.
Until then, i would say that my concerns are not "knee-jerk" but justified.
Numbers/spreadsheet results posted in this thread seem to contradict your position that Dex/Non Ego SS characters are getting a damage buff. Checking my own Dex/Int Archers numbers I can confirm that that character's supreme OP'ness has been scaled back : )
Something that is being overlooked IMO is the significantly different affect on gameplay between critical hit frequency and critical hit magnitude. If every fight was a defensive passive hero against
tough bosses then the difference is negated because the fight becomes one of DPS over time. But, a higher crit chance delivers more damage early on, and potentially overall, than a higher severity. This is simply because of the tactic of putting foes down quickly. It doesnt matter if your long term DPS remains the same if you are an offensive passive toon whose survivability relies on defeating your opposition before they can put you down.
Similarly the extra DPS from severity, supposedly to make up for damage lost to a reduction in crit chance, means little if the foes drop before the statistics kick in to even things out.
Are you trying to say that current non-DEX EGO builds aren't possible or viable?
Well now we're into the age-old debate of "less damage more often" vs. "more damage less often". I don't think anyone's gonna win that argument.
300 dex/10 ego is 28% crit/43% severity; net 12% damage bonus.
300 dex/300 ego is 36% crit/91% severity; net 32% damage bonus.
Honestly, both superstats by themselves (i.e. without the other) are atrocious, though it's better than live (where the bonuses are 0.11% for the ego build, 5.9% for the dex build).
INT/EGO Quarry with CON, STR should be good. Assuming Incisive Wit still boosts crit chance, you could use Ego Surge, Lock and Load and Imbue to keep crits going. Primary defense gear would be CON, primary offense gear would be STR. That should allow Enrage to be valuable. I guess the build would be either Force (for the crazy ranged kb) or Munitions, maybe with one of the solid muni Power Replacers.
edit: but I'm not saying you're "knee-jerk reacting". I just like posting builds...
Personally, regarding current non-dex ego builds, with very few exceptions I believe that those builds would be better off with something other than ego SS.
If you are relying on Force Sheath or Prot field for energy management then Ego has merit without dex, but even so Ive had better results with Int SS and some ego from gear). If someone chooses to not partake of the multitude of energy management set ups available and instead opts to rely on blocking for energy gain Ego helps make up for the self gimp.
I know I'm going to regret this one, but here it goes...
Maybe they should be looking at lowering/tweaking enrage's str scaling, or just the power enrage in general, then?
You can pick any stat combination and lv to 40 if you set your mind to it.
Possible? any thing is doable in this game.
Viable? i would say no but that's a statement of opinion and depends on who you ask.
Competitive with more traditional stat combinations? no not before these changes and (to my knowledge) not after.
I want the stat changes to give me new options, not rearrange the options i already have. I'm not saying that EGO hasn't improved but that it hasn't improved enough to justify these changes or to create any significant hero building changes.
I'm trying to say that build options should significantly expand with the addition of another viable standalone stat.
I'm trying to say that i don't see too many people taking EGO after the change that wernt taking it any way (except to exchange str fro ego to knock which is only a slight surface change).
I'm trying to say that if there are these grate new EGO builds that are made possible by these changes then i haven't seen them.
Well I dont honestly know about that debate, but as someone who playe offensive characters (almost) exclusively (in every game I have played) I can assure you that letting the bad guys live longer reduces survivability.
Mathematically shifting from chance to severity only keeps damage the same when measured over a longer period of time. A character that relies on defeating foes before they have time to do the same to him, offensive passive characters in this game, are reduced in effectiveness by such a shift.
Disclaimer: In a team environment, while facing a boss, with a tank to prevent the squishy offensive character from being targeted, dps over time is more valid for an offensive passive toon.
Getting the crit to finish off a group of mobs a quarter second after they defeated you, because your crit chance is reduced, does an offensive passive character no good.
Im not arguing that a higher crit chance/lower severity is universally better than the reverse. What I am saying is that each approach is particularly suited to a different playstyle. By changing the formula to favor defensive passives, which are already superior to offensive passives, the offensive playstyle/spec is reduced.
This could make the difference between Focus and Enrage melee builds more substantial: crits and crazy energy from Rush or obscene damage potential?
Edit: stupid autocorrect.
But that's exactly what you're arguing; that reducing crit % and increasing severity hampers offensive characters because they can't kill as quickly despite DPS over time being the same. Which is why I bought up the "less damage more often" debate, cause that's essentially what you're saying, that less damage more often (more crits for less severity) is better for offensive characters than more damage less often (less crits but higher severity). Which, as I mentioned, is a debate you nor anyone else is likely to ever win.
Just so you can stop going around in circles about the current set of stat data, I'm letting you know that our next PTS push will have updated Dex/Ego crit contributions. Basically, our first pass checked for larger numbers of stats, and we hadn't examined lower numbers enough. After examining them more (and as commented on from several players in this thread) we realized it did things we weren't happy with.
Also, part of the goal with the first pass was to make Ego better, but not make combining Ego with Dex better, because we were concerned about pushing crit too high. This was a mistake, and limited our ability to actually make Ego better (since if Ego is a better stat all around, shouldn't it also be better when combined with Dex, not just with other stats?). Anyhow, we modified the contributions from each stat to crit chance/severity. It now looks like this:
Crit Chance: determined by (Dex*0.9) + (Ego*0.3) + Critical Strike Rating
Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.9) + (Dex*0.2) + Critical Severity Rating
With the previous PTS push, if you had equal numbers of Dex and Ego, your Crit stats would be unchanged from Live. With the new version, if you have equal amounts of Dex and Ego, you will be getting a buff. As an example - if you have 250 Dex and Ego, on Live your numbers are 31.7% Crit and 82.9% Severity. Your new PTS numbers would instead be 36% Crit and 87% Severity.
If you had 300 Dex and 10 Ego, on Live your crit stats were 36% Crit, 16.6% Severity. Now it will be 33.8% Crit and 43.6% Severity.
Similarly, the crit severity rates for Ego will go up because of this. We should have a new PTS build soon that will have these changes and more.
Also, some people started talking about Enrage... That's a big issue to tackle, and not something we're going to be looking at with this round of changes.
Ahh.. its good to have Ame back in full swing.
Despite my nerd rage i have a feeling that every thing will turn out alright by the end of the month.
Old Optimums (100-800 stat points)
Dex: 78; Ego: 22; Chance: 6.9%; Severity: 24.6; Dbon: 1.7%; SE: 0.017
Dex: 145; Ego: 55; Chance: 17.9%; Severity: 38.9; Dbon: 7.0%; SE: 0.035
Dex: 200; Ego: 100; Chance: 26.0%; Severity: 52.5; Dbon: 13.6%; SE: 0.045
Dex: 246; Ego: 154; Chance: 31.3%; Severity: 65.1; Dbon: 20.4%; SE: 0.051
Dex: 285; Ego: 215; Chance: 34.8%; Severity: 76.9; Dbon: 26.8%; SE: 0.054
Dex: 318; Ego: 282; Chance: 37.3%; Severity: 88.1; Dbon: 32.8%; SE: 0.055
Dex: 348; Ego: 352; Chance: 39.1%; Severity: 98.4; Dbon: 38.5%; SE: 0.055
Dex: 375; Ego: 425; Chance: 40.5%; Severity: 108.2; Dbon: 43.8%; SE: 0.055
New Optimums (100-800 stat points)
Dex: 88; Ego: 12; Chance: 7.6%; Severity: 28.0; Dbon: 2.1%; SE: 0.021
Dex: 156; Ego: 44; Chance: 19.3%; Severity: 44.1; Dbon: 8.5%; SE: 0.043
Dex: 201; Ego: 99; Chance: 27.3%; Severity: 59.7; Dbon: 16.3%; SE: 0.054
Dex: 229; Ego: 171; Chance: 32.4%; Severity: 74.1; Dbon: 24.0%; SE: 0.060
Dex: 245; Ego: 255; Chance: 35.8%; Severity: 87.6; Dbon: 31.3%; SE: 0.063
Dex: 253; Ego: 347; Chance: 38.1%; Severity: 99.9; Dbon: 38.1%; SE: 0.064
Dex: 254; Ego: 446; Chance: 39.9%; Severity: 111.6; Dbon: 44.5%; SE: 0.064
Dex: 254; Ego: 546; Chance: 41.3%; Severity: 122.2; Dbon: 50.4%; SE: 0.063
Overall crits are better with this build, but the same stat anomaly (which is also present on live) remains: your optimal build is to focus first on dex, then shift over to ego. I also list 'stat efficiency', which is the damage bonus divided by the total attribute points spent; as we can see, stat efficiency is significantly reduced below around 300 total points spent on the two stats, and is nearly flat over the 500-800 stat points spent range. I don't really think that's how diminishing returns were intended to work (this flaw is equally present on Live, of course).
Second of all, to address some points I've seen people bring up...[ramble mode activate]
After my initial alarm over the stat changes, I actually tested a few different EGO/INT setups with the new TK fixes in the test shard, on the logic that the best test of whether Cryptic had made Ego a standalone stat was to take them at their word, treat it like one, and see what I got. I ran EGO/INT Mentalist builds, both TK blade and general ranged, stacking the new Ego Leech mechanics with Super Intelligence to push energy costs for Mentalist powers as low as I could and check for viability. I figured that with Super Intelligence being as awesome as it was, and with Ego Leech making that Intelligence cost reduction even more epic, I was about as set as I ever was to make use of my newly, happily stand-alone Ego.
...yeah.
First of all, gearing Int/Ego, by default, sucks as much as gearing Int/End does. Second of all, if ye want numbers, just skip this post entirely. I don't have hard numbers, which will probably completely invalidate this entire post, but I can tell you guys that I pretty much ended up on the floor bleeding any time I fought sufficiently strong/numerous enemies as to require any sort of competence or optimization to defeat. With an offensive mindset, anyways. Ego's standalone critical ability, while certainly improved, was not enough improved to stand without Dexterity as a means of increasing damage. What turned out to be more important was the additional control from ranged knocks in my ranged and hybrid tests - Super Ego's new knock scaling with TK Wave is great. However, the TK Blade attempts were laughable. In my tests, which admittedly were more about gut feeling and direct observation than math or number-crunching, DEX/EGO outperformed INT/EGO, which I felt to be the next most viable combination for the TK builds I was testing, in just about every meaningful way insofar as damage went.
As I said, the ranged versions did better, but that was due to factors completely independent of the critical adjustments. TK Wave sending enemies to Bermuda was far more important to that build than the occasional juicy crit. The hybrid Blade/ranged builds I rigged up, trying to see if TK could work as a psychic version of the MA/Munitions character which is my current main, only did well when it basically ignored its melee attacks entirely and focused on controller-style gameplay with knocks from TK Burst and TK Wave. Which...suddenly reminded me of how an Impulse-style character is supposed to live. With that in mind, and some reasonable tweaks later, I had the combination working acceptably as a controller - acceptably, if not spectacularly.
In this regard, Ego is a 'standalone' stat as much as Strength is, provided one forgets that Enrage scales with Strength. Strength boosts knock resistance, melee knock strength, and physical melee damage; Ego boosts mez resistance, ranged knock strength, TK melee damage, and also provides heavy critical damage. In that respect, when stats are considered in isolation of skills, Ego is actually one of the strongest stats around at the moment given that it provides a larger number of useful benefits than any other stat, one of them quite considerable.
The problem, now that I've tested crap and rambled my way through data and experience, isn't with Ego vampiring off some of Dex's crit chance, or with the whole critical thing in general. That's a side issue, albeit a pressing one. It's that nothing useful scales with Ego, whatsoever. Strength scales Enrage, and Enrage is broke as hell, thus Strength is also the next best thing to broke as hell. MA Forms scale primarily with Dexterity, and MA forms are very nearly competitive with Enrage in terms of damage (for melee anyway), and so Dex is considered a top-end stat. Ego...scales a couple of less-than-useful energy unlocks and minor energy returns from a couple of Force skills. Wowee.
In this respect, people are more concerned with a stat that scales useful skills being whacked in exchange for aiding a stat that scales bupkis. Given that Ego competes with Intelligence, which has one of the most useful intrinsic effects in the game as well as scaling the outrageously useful Molecular Self-Assembly, it's not going to be seen as anything but a junk stat until it gets something that it, personally, can juice up which actually matters.
That's what needs to happen, not any of the muss and fuss over critical rates and energy gain. People don't want to drop the stat that scales the damage from their Form of the Tempest in exchange for the stat which scales how much energy return they get from their Force Sheath. The one is staggeringly more important than the other, and for all of Ego's value to a controller build, as long as it's perceived as an 'attacking' stat focusing mainly on criticals which scales...nada...it's GOING to be a junk stat.
So...any ideas for how to fix that problem? o_O
And how am i supposed to "bump up my Ego"? Which of my talents that I otherwise need for other stats should I sacrifice for more ego or which of the 9 equipment slots that I have very carefully selected for very specific reasons should I swap out for a stat that I had no use for before this? Are they going to give me an extra few talent points to spend or a fourth row of equipment slots?
You're a smart guy. I think if you put your mind to it you could figure it out.
Well duh, your re-stat and re-gear. Often completely I would think. I think a retcon should be given out here....
Not at all the case. I am in no way, shape, or form, arguing that higher chance/lower severity is universally better. In fact at least one of my DPS characters (one with higher survivability than norm for me) will come out ahead with reduced chance but increased severity. I am arguing that it is better for characters with lower survivability who need more front loaded, burst, damage than a character with a defensive passive. A change than ensures that a squishy's damage remains the same when measured over 30 seconds, a minute, etc means very little to a character that is designed to win or lose a fight in the first 10-15 seconds.
A better rule of debate is not to feign moral superiority/righteous indignation when somebody makes a perfectly valid observation, either. If you feel the need to get bent out of shape over it, well, seems I've touched a nerve of truth, friend.
When people continue to complain about how their optimal damage builds are no longer optimal because of changes made to game mechanics, invariably a new optimal build is discovered and people adapt and evolve to the new mechanic. The intervening time between the two is nothing more than a mild annoyance at best, while this thread is packed with people crying about how their lives are ruined.
Adapt. The people in he thread who are exploring the math behind the new stat mechanics and making positive suggestions on how best to implement them in builds? That's the right idea and I applaud it.
More of that, please.
Of course, Captain snark isn't trying to argue that, he's trying to dismiss the argument without having it by claiming that the argument has no clear answer. I'm pretty sure legions of squishies have answered the question for themselves, otherwise we'd see them all sporting hard frost and eye beams instead of force cascade and gigabolt.
The first time I ran serpent lantern with my squishy ego blader I killed the last boss without seeing his super attack. Didn't even know he had it. Later when I went back with a tougher, but less burst-damagy character I was in for a rude surprise.
Needless to say, where my tougher character was only hurt badly, my ego blader would have been dead. But he wasn't. Because of front loaded damage.
The concern still is that optimum crits are at lower Dex. Unless MA Forms and archery/muni Instincts get tweaked, that means its still a nerf to to a whole lot of toons. At least now, though, it's a smaller problem than before.
Oh, and it makes it really easy to build DEX based toons not using MA forms. Just get to ~250 DEX and stop
(MA Form users...ya...that's going to be a pain to find the sweet spot)
Have you met my toons Anne Thraxx (T4), Cassandra(T3), or Ol' BIll(T2). They are all sustained DPS squishies. Heck, two of them are pesti toons which means really, really squishy. All three of them have ridiculously high kill-per-match numbers in PvP which for you non-PvP types means they are really deadly. My archery toon is another sustained DPS toon ('course, it's not like archery has any choice in the matter). At the extreme of sustained DPS, I have a telepath who can kill tanks...as long as the tank doesn't run away. And they will run away because they prolly aren't going to kill her.
Oh, and the telepath is PRE/EGO because when I built her I just had to try out Mind Link in PvP and it scales to EGO. After a dozen stronghold matches, I decided committing suicide to maybe do 2000 points per tick of damage or maybe doing 1 point per tick of damage or anything in between just wasn't a really good idea.
p.s. Mind Link really does encourage suicide. If it proc's off damage to you, it proc's off the damage you take, not the incoming damage. So if you do anything to mitigate damage, Mind Link hits for less. If we hadn't gotten off on the whole stat thing, I was going to push to get it looked at as part of the TK pass since Mind Link is available to TK users.
I had the same exact experience with my TK blader.
At least now most builds will be getting a slight to moderate buff to critical chance and critical severity using the same Dex and Ego values they have on live, so our MA characters can keep the same stats they have now and enjoy higher DPS, so I can't complain. True we'll have to live with not optimizing critical layer damage bonus for the sake of our synergies, but at least we won't be getting nerfed.
With the latest version of the changes everyone with .33*ego > .1*dex gets a buff to their critical chance, so e.g. a character with 320 dex and 120 ego gets a buff to critical chance and critical severity (almost everyone gets a buff to their severity).
Thanks for listening to us Ame, I think this was a great direction to choose.
Why 1.2 for Ego, but 1.1 for Dex?
Why not 1.2 unilaterally?
You know I tried a sustained dps squish in T2/T3 PvP and he did really well. He doesn't do nearly as well as my other squishies in the PvE game though, which is not to say he can't manage, he just dies more routinely than any of my "get in and get out" characters. My proudest moment was in a UTC match where the opposing teams "strategist" called me out in zone for the rest of her team to target, because she realized the health drain I was putting on her team with R3 Chain Lightning spam (basically free once you factor in ionic Reverb) was what was really killing them. And that character also came out of every match with obscene player kill numbers. But I was only rarely the one who finished anyone off, what I was doing was stressing the resources of the other team and highlighting targets who lacked compensating resources to the more deadly people on my own team.
Ame, you are an awesome person. Thank you for reading through all our comments, as I'm sure we must get rather tedious! (Well, I know I must be!)
Just one quick question though:
Why are the two formulae different? What would happen if we had Crit Severity: determined by (Ego*0.9) + (Dex*0.3) + Critical Severity Rating ?
Space-time rupture?
Paradox?
Zombies?
That would buff Dex and make Ego less important, so it sort of goes counter to the intent of these changes.
I love buffs as much as anyone, but let's not push our luck.
P.S. The formula for turning .9dex +.3ego into critical chance and the formula turning .9ego + .2dex into severity are totally different from each other, so even if it was .9ego + .3dex it wouldn't really be symmetrical.
Gotcha
Thanks for the answer there too! All the formulae make my brain melt. I prefer words over numbers.
And one could site a half dozen other scenarios where front loaded damage would have gotten you killed vs. sustained DPS, for example, unleashing your front-loaded attack, burning all your energy, and NOT killing the bad guy who then repeatedly smacks you back hard while you're trying to block, build up your energy, and then charge your big hitter (provided you don't get knocked around while charging, breaking the attack). Like I've said twice now, there is no winner in this debate. It all depends on the situation.
the set has one of the longest melee charge attacks in the game and its annoying to have it interrupted when someone sneezes
We're getting completely off topic here, but since there will be a new patch with new patch notes and a new thread to go with them, what the hey...
If you'd gone lightning arc instead of chain lightning, you'd have been the one killing people. It's easily the highest damage T0 power in the game (although the new TK assault comes close). The downsides are that it self-roots, and it draws a great big bright line back to your toon while painting a huge KILL ME sign over your head.
And, if you just want silliness....build your toon STR/END electric form with enrage. Those already painful lightning arcs will just ruin people.
Oh, and you'd be a sustained damage squishy
In the example you give the squishy does not benefit from sustained DPS. If the foe survives your burst and counters with damage sufficient to defeat you, then he would survive your sustained DPS at least as long and respond with damage sufficient to defeat you.
A squishy does not benefit from prolonging a fight. Sustained DPS is about damage over a prolonged fight. Purposefully allowing your foe to live longer does a squishy no good whatsoever.
This is where your lack of experience with PvP and endgame content shows up.
I'll use my soon-to-be-nerfed force toon, Little Dolly Pwnz-a-Lot (that name is not my fault) as an example.
Dolly can hit 13k force cascades. Ya, that's dead squishy right there. That's dead lots of things right there.
But not Therakiel or any of the supertanks running around in PvP. So if she was built as poorly as the toon you talked about, ya, she'd die.
She's not poorly built. She's also not out of energy, she has a whole mitful of defenses and self-heals, and she can go from WTFBBQ spike damage to tap FC sustained DPS without too much trouble 'tall.
She's been a part of a whole bunch of teams that have taken down Therakiel on elite difficulty while my SG was helping everyone in the SG get his sword unlocked. She's killed her fair share of supertanks. She's a rock solid PvP and PvE toon.
I interpret the formulae to mean your potential crit chance is 20% higher than on Live, and your potential Crit Severity is 10% higher. Or something like that.
This was before the Electricity pass actually, so Lightning Arc would have made the guy kind of sad. I will eventually get back to him at some point and rebuild him.
Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to do more overall sustained damage in-between two burst attacks. Ask any well-built PA. And while a squishy may not benefit from a prolonged fight, it may not always be a disadvantage. Sometimes slow and steady really does win the race. It depends on the character and what you're fighting. There is no right or wrong here. It's all subjective.
There is more to the game than level 40 raids and PvP. So assuming that everything must be tweaked to benefit only those situations, or that those characters that are the only ones that matter, or are typical characters in typical scenarios is extremely short-sighted. Your elitism is showing again.
When the next patch goes up, and we see the newest round of changes we can see if there are any powers that can help EGO shine.
If you have pvped at all in the last 2 months you'll know that squishy toons just get farmed by tanks. Mainly cause a squishy relies on burst which can be easily mitigated by defiance / whatever + any active defense. Then the tank can just slowly grind the squishy down with crowd control while they try to escape. Or some tanks just do low end glass cannon damage while being as tough as Ironclad.
*double post not my fault if it happens, forum goign wonky for me