I see what your saying in most of you post but i dont agree with this.
Its not as if the balance problems this game has are unsalvable without massive colateral damage. I also dont think that you can call "FOTM" builds 1%.
I truly believe that even handed adjustments to balance can bring balance in this game to an acceptable level.
I believe that discouraging cretin kinds of stacking can reel in the min maxers with out alienating the theme builds.
I believe that there is too much variance in the high end and low end of defensive passive performance and if we hold defensive passives to a stricter standard, then we can have a more balanced game play experience without nerfing defiance and invuln down to PFF level. I don't think the game would fall apart for theme builds if no defensive passive was more powerful then, say, LR.
I believe that we should acknowledge that certain effects interact in such a way that they produce extreme results. (like stacking resistance healing and dodging and damage absorption to certain levels all on the same toon)
I'm not saying that we should directly nerf the powers that provide these buffs. I'm saying that we should police the way they interact (for example if you have X amount of resistance, you should not be able to stack more than Y dodge chance/ avoidance).
Lets have a little faith in Ame. I don't think this is the limit of his balancing ability.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Tweak the diminishing returns algorithms better so that by themselves or in small combinations buffs stay fairly potent, but when highly stacked they become much less effective. I can get onboard that train.
And I have complete 100% faith in the dev team. While I haven't necessarily agreed with everything they've done, by and large it's all been good.
One Hundred Hands w/ Ghostly Hands: I'm not sure if it's working as intended but every other period is dimensional damage, not every other damage tick. Damage-wise it's a bit scary since that extra 10% base more than makes up for the damage "lost" on the damage type change when using the upgraded WotW... especially since it also ignores 50% of the target's damage resist. On a side note, can we only get the ghost hands FX if we take the adv? Rank 3 still has the ghost hands FX.
Elbow Slam w/ Falling Hammer: I don't like the idea behind the Falling Hammer adv. The mobs where you'd want the bonus damage are immune to knocks and stuns. Everything else dies so fast it doesn't matter. The disorient on the base power may be somewhat thematic but serves no purpose in the MA set mechanically.
Leaping Uppercut w/ Chi Flame: Trading a flat 20% damage boost for a 10% damage boost, damage type shift and a piddly DoT is not worth it. Feels more like a 1 point advantage. The animation still makes me cringe. Rename it to "Hopping Uppercut" for more truth in advertising.
Backhand Chop w/ Stinging Bee: Allows stacking of the Unarmed focus up to 8 stacks. If you have a focus toggle that's not the Unarmed toggle you can have 16 Focus stacks total. Only one focus stack is possible if a focus toggle is not active. Energy is always granted allowing for double ticks of energy if you crit while using Form of the Tempest.
Open Palm Strike w/ Focused Chi Blast: Occasionally shows the character hitting twice on one activation. I was unable to use this power at max range (25 feet) as I would get a "Must have a target" error despite having a target.
Rising Knee w/ Flowing Strikes: Lose the two strike limit on the Flowing Strikes advantage and it *might* be worthwhile if it wasn't that outside of theme there's still no real reason to bother with this power.
Shuriken Storm w/ Floating Butterfly: Just when it was getting to be slightly different from Lead Tempest it gets nearly the same advantage...
Since the line between melee and ranged is being further blurred, why persist with melee/ranged specific buffs, debuffs and roles? Open Palm Strike w/ Focused Chi Blast is ranged, as in it's outside of melee range, yet is buffed by Brawler and Focus. There never was a reason to have such differences in the first place and the continual adding of ranged melee powers is insulting.
I just found a Bug with backhand chop advantage there isn't a cap on the amount of focus stacks it gives, so you can have two focus powers up at once with full stacks of 8, such as, the Form of the Tempest and the Form of the Master that backhand chop advantage gives.
And your *counters* mechanic is what drives most people away from pvp, cos they are forced to play DW\Ruin clones just to have a chance vs unkillable god-moders, and everyone wants to play their own concept hero with cool attack, w\o need to take said 2 boring anti-tank attacks, only to compete. Rly, even i would like to stop picking those, but then i know if i'll do that, i should just ignore 8\10 players in every match, cos they just won't die.
A bit late, but what we need is a PVP focussed powerset where you can cherry pick powers that help in pvp. Like a 5 second buff power for avengers that grants armour pen on all attacks etc etc.
Since the line between melee and ranged is being further blurred, why persist with melee/ranged specific buffs, debuffs and roles? Open Palm Strike w/ Focused Chi Blast is ranged, as in it's outside of melee range, yet is buffed by Brawler and Focus. There never was a reason to have such differences in the first place and the continual adding of ranged melee powers is insulting.
I agree in absolute with Falchoin's comments, and I want to re emphasize what I quoted.
I still have many of the same thoughts/concerns from here after seeing some of the planned Advantages come to light, but I will add some specific new feedback as well:
The description for "One Hundred Hands:Ghostly Strike" needs some trim-ming (<-funky profanity filtering there) of the phrasing, or an added 's':
"...causing every other tick of damage this power deals to instead be dealt as Dimensional Damage. ..."
or
"...causing every other tick of damage <> to instead be dealt as Dimensional Damage. ..."
First, the above One Hundred Hands:Ghostly Strike doesn't display in the "All Powers" text, like other powers display their Advantages and a description (the text above is from the Power House trainer's Advantage allocation window).
However, I will also take this opportunity to say that the display of Advantages remains problematic and inconsistent as a general rule...two things that I view as problems are that of Advantages not showing their effect in tooltips for affected powers on the Power Tray (this impairs the usefulness of tooltips in explaining what the power will actually do), and the info display in the Powers Window not showing available Advantages (this seems like it should be as complete as the All Powers information).
I'm observing anomalous behavior in critical hit occurrence more often than I would expect, where there will be a constant line of "Critical Hit" notifications displayed during a maintain (again, observed for One Hundred Hands). Perhaps, with this being a multiple target attack, the display of values is sorting the display of the damage values and the Critical Hit notification, and placing them in a direct line, while the actual hits are not "streaking" as it appears, but what it looks like when this happens is that a Critical Hit determination is (sometimes) getting stuck on a particular target and repeated during the maintain.
This is DEX based, not from Imbue, if there was any confusion.
Yup, what's with "Brawler reduces ranged damage, except for these powers"? Be the hero you want to be, but you'll get 50% more dps and dpe if you take the hacked powers?
And as a reminder, Shuriken does a more dps and dpe in Guardian with 10 STR than Snapshot does in Avenger, unless the target is below 25% health in which case it's about even. If the target is below 25% health, Snapshot does 5% better. Unless the Shuriken user has some STR and/or Brawler, in which case Shuriken tops Snapshot in Snapshot's ideal condition. Oh yeah, Shuriken has a knockdown too.
Yup, what's with "Brawler reduces ranged damage, except for these powers"? Be the hero you want to be, but you'll get 50% more dps and dpe if you take the hacked powers?
And as a reminder, Shuriken does a more dps and dpe in Guardian with 10 STR than Snapshot does in Avenger, unless the target is below 25% health in which case it's about even. If the target is below 25% health, Snapshot does 5% better. Unless the Shuriken user has some STR and/or Brawler, in which case Shuriken tops Snapshot in Snapshot's ideal condition. Oh yeah, Shuriken has a knockdown too.
i think by now we all know that avenger is absolute crap in comparison to other passives, there is almost no reason at all to use it over guardian.
-Well, the Ghostly Strikes advantage is pretty much as I expected it to be. Took it into Elite SL, and the damage it did was nearly identical on both ticks against all the mobs, and against VIPER X's NPC invuln the defense penetration was negligible at best. Against targets with no resists, the damage is lower than just R3.
This was on a R3 Quarry build with a Form, it might perform slightly better in a WotW build, but not by much. If it performs the same against player Invuln, I'd say it's pretty much a complete waste of one advantage point.
-The Focused Chi Blast advantage could use slightly more range, and I wish it were a fireball. Really, that's all the feedback I have about that, it's actually quite nice.
-The Knee advantage seems to be good for following up with a R3 heavy hitter, or maybe Elbow. All in all, not that impressive, but kinda fun.
-The Elbow advantage is actually pretty nice, and could see using it in a crowd controlling tanker build. The disorient still feels out of place with the rest of the set, nothing else really works with it.
-Rising Uppercut's advantage is pretty lackluster. I don't see any reason to take it besides flavor unless you were making a DoT focused build. In which case, why are you making a DoT focused build?
-Well, the Ghostly Strikes advantage is pretty much as I expected it to be. Took it into Elite SL, and the damage it did was nearly identical on both ticks against all the mobs, and against VIPER X's NPC invuln the defense penetration was negligible at best. Against targets with no resists, the damage is lower than just R3.
This was on a R3 Quarry build with a Form, it might perform slightly better in a WotW build, but not by much. If it performs the same against player Invuln, I'd say it's pretty much a complete waste of one advantage point.
Yeah... Even though it adds 50% penetration to the dimensional damage..? That's still uhh. 25% of the damage that actually gets through. IDF or invuln's absorption. Which is like 250-500 damage every half second for a critical hit.
Against things that aren't tanked it's not so bad,
Open Palm Strike suffers from Split Damage Syndrome. Splitting damage down the middle isn't really desirable unless it's actually going to be worthwhile. And now Open Palm Strike has a longer charge and maybe the same damage as EBB when ranked to 3. Less damage with the advantage. The range might compensate but it should be all one damage type or the other with a 3 point advantage.
the fact that it's a 3 point advantage is also odd. Is it really on par for utility with Crippling Challenge? A slightly extended melee AoE knock is only going to shine with one superstat, and even then you'd be better off with roomsweeper.
I hope at some level this encourages the Devs to step up and deal with the problems revealed by PvP - problems that have growing awareness because more people are now participating in PvP as a result of sniffing around after the revamped PvP gear rewards. Problems that result in large swaths of the community knowing exactly which three attacks are the benchmark for superior effectiveness and exactly what defenses they're facing when attacking the only critters in the game that credibly fight back - other players.
It almost doesn't matter what these powers do against NPCs. NPC are wads of dough with little ambition beyond hopping around and screaming for a few seconds before they die. I don't need more tools for killing wads of dough. I need tools to threaten the swarms of supertanks out there. None of these powers are shaking out to be a credible addition to to the first, or even second tier of effective attacks. Its almost a waste of animator time, not because new powers are a bad thing but because the grotesque disparity between actual effectiveness of powers comming out of the beloved spreadsheet is staggering. There are some core evaluation processes that are manifestly broken, and here comes another crop of "meh" as a result. I'm pretty good at math and I literally do not understand the parameters for a set of formulas that allows advantaged DW and infinte reiki resurgence to coexist with these as if they were equivalent offerings.
Be a little daring. Walk out on the wildside. Show some spunk. Make some powers that have the potential to shake up a frozen status quo.
Rising Knee - Flowing Strikes: What is the best-case-scenario gain from a 10% reduction in damage resistance? That magnitude sounds hella sketchy for 2 points. Any chance of getting it to debuff resistence for then next 2 crushing and/or dimensional damage attacks so that it better synergizes with the set and has more cross-set opportunities?
I'm trying to see if it somehow lends itself to being a lead-in before a force cascade.
-Well, the Ghostly Strikes advantage is pretty much as I expected it to be. Took it into Elite SL, and the damage it did was nearly identical on both ticks against all the mobs, and against VIPER X's NPC invuln the defense penetration was negligible at best. Against targets with no resists, the damage is lower than just R3.
And it would seem that the damage penetration isn't doing much in pve either.
Maybe its serving some purpose that im just overlooking but:
Ame i have to ask, what did you hope to accomplish by adding this small defense penetration to the dot?
It isn't striking fear in to any ones heart in pvp, and it isnt having a significant impact on the already cake walkish pve.
To be honest, i kinda wish you would just get rid of the damage penetration because i have the feeling that it will get in the way of us getting "real useful" 2ndary FX on these chi attacks. Damage penetration sounds good on paper, but if it only ends up being a "tease" and an excuse not to touch these powers any more, then i would rather not have them at all.
TL,DR
Make the damage penetration worth while (especially in pvp) or get rid of it.
Yup, what's with "Brawler reduces ranged damage, except for these powers"? Be the hero you want to be, but you'll get 50% more dps and dpe if you take the hacked powers?
And as a reminder, Shuriken does a more dps and dpe in Guardian with 10 STR than Snapshot does in Avenger, unless the target is below 25% health in which case it's about even. If the target is below 25% health, Snapshot does 5% better. Unless the Shuriken user has some STR and/or Brawler, in which case Shuriken tops Snapshot in Snapshot's ideal condition. Oh yeah, Shuriken has a knockdown too.
This, you need to deal with the brawler exception powers. It's ludicrously imbalanced.
I'd guess you want to make the powers viable to certain concepts that may use them, but why shouldn't a hero who is good at shooting be better at throwing shuriken or rocks than a MA or hulk?
Why should brawlers who have a shuriken concept be treated better than a brawler who uses arrows?
These attempts to reward a few EXTREMELY UNIMAGINATIVE concepts are making PVP unfair, invalidating the point of roles, reducing the ability to actually build for REMOTELY UNIQUE concepts, and encouraging extreme twinking. Please just do not attempt to 'reward' a few limited concepts, and maybe then concept builds can actually be decently viable.
The training dummies on the circular track in the north end of the Dummy Testing Range have gone mad and need to be put down. ...Possibly with atomic fire.
I can live with it. Try it with heroic flight on if you want to see a giant hash of graphical artifacts though...
I have to agree that I really don't like the damage split on open palm strike.
Aww, just because you know at a glance its another blob of damage that going to just VANISH into the sucking maw of IDF/Invulnerability? What could possibly be disheartening about that?
An idea for One Hundred hands is to increase the damage the longer the power is maintained. Maybe start off the initial attacks lower, but having the strikes maybe 40%-50% stronger at the final hits would be nice.
To that i say:
Regardless of if you feel this way or not. There is a very valid argument to be made against game design that purposefully excludes challenge. I don't think there is a real argument to be made that standard game design often includes allowing a player to inter a game world and be virtually unchallenged and unthreatened by NPCs.
I fear for the balance and longevity of this game if we decide to take the attitude that "nothing is overpowered in pve".
To be fair, we don't have demanding content to use as a metric. If we use the current content as a yardstick and say "This is what should be difficult", we're going to be nerfing the loving hell out of nearly everything.
Nemesis minion Aliens with Supernatural powers still fail to increment the Nemesis slayer perks ("I believe", "Predator", etc.).
The first page after opening the Nemesis Database is accompannied by a continuous high speed beeping as if a button were being pressed extremely rapidly. This sound goes away after continuing to deeper pages.
One Hunder Hands: Ghostly Strikes (New!):
I have a feeling that it will be impossible because each advantage is its own power but, i think it makes sense for the ghost hands graphical effect on 100 hands to be tied to the ghostly strikes advantage instead of rank 3 of the power.
Okay, I kind of see what you're going for with the advantage on Elbow Strike, Leaping Uppercut, etc.
But if you want us to use these built-in "combos", there needs to be incentive not to just use Leaping Uppercut again. It'll figure out to better damage. Given the extremely narrow timing window for using the adv. on Elbow Strike, a significantly stronger effect is in order I'd think. I like the idea of "combos", but they need to be worth using for the idea to work.
To be fair, we don't have demanding content to use as a metric. If we use the current content as a yardstick and say "This is what should be difficult", we're going to be nerfing the loving hell out of nearly everything.
Actually, i don't think that's a fair statement.
I think that the quote from Kien in post # 47 has some examples of what should be difficult and there are others (like the end of resistance when your supposed to be piloting the destroid but ive herd people bragging about not needing to). And if you want a measuring stick so bad how hard is it to say that no player should be able to withstand more than (X) dps?
I'm sorry if im coming off as insensitive but this post sounds like "nerf paranoia" to me. I dont meant to put words in your mouth but it almost sounds as if your saying
"that there is nothing in this game that is supposed to be hard and if balancing this game means any nerfs then the game should remain unbalanced."
I want to restate that i think most of the overpowerednes comes from stacking certain affects to extreme levels. Most of the individual powers in this game that are overpowered, are not that overpowered.
PFF needs more of a buff than say, Defiance needs a nerf.
And speaking of buffs, there are way more powers in this game that need buffing than nerfing.
My vision of balance is more bringing the way powers interact under control (stacking) and bring the under performers up to speed (setting stricter standards for what various categories of powers should be able to do).
No need for a nerfgasum, but a few powers need to be turned down a few DB for a good mix. Pro Audio Reference
I think that the quote from Kien in post # 47 has some examples of what should be difficult and there are others (like the end of resistance when your supposed to be piloting the destroid but ive herd people bragging about not needing to).
It's really tough to take a hit from one of the colossi. It's really easy to not get hit by them, and with the right build there's really nothing else that can hurt you (I was using invuln plus ebon void, and my hit points weren't moving despite a dozen helicopters attacking me).
No, it's not buff stacking, read my posts before talking back. Try that *buff stacking* on any other passive, u won't archive same results like u will with invuln\defiance.
And rly, even if we *may* consider stacking was a problem, why go a long hard way of fixing it instead of 2 passives that make that make that *stacking* truly overpowered? When u take defiance or invuln ALONE u notice ur surviviability skyrocket, but try taking lightning reflexes ALONE, and watch ur character die to 1 npc spawn. Not even mentioning that defiance gives u practically infinite energy and doesn't require ranking ur passive up and invuln counters all those small npc's turning them to useless meat fodder and making u notice existance only of hard-hitting master villains who still get their damage halved (and some pvp mechanics as i mentioned before)
Invuln and Defiance being good against inconsequential henchmen waves is working as intended. LR being vulnerable to henchmen was pointed out long ago, instead of changing LR they made it so BCR+LR made you immune to henchmen instead. Henchmen are there to represent the legions of mooks superheros effortlessly blast through on their way to the Supervillain. In WoW terms they are trash packs and time fillers before the boss encounter.
Someone soloed teleio by using a damaging block and Regen. How does nerfing Invuln or defiance help that again?
You will never have anything resembling the "challenge" you desire in this game until buff stacking is addressed, period. You can nerf every single power in the game to the ground, or you can cut out all that time and change the core mechanic.
[QUOTE=You will never have anything resembling the "challenge" you desire in this game until buff stacking is addressed, period. You can nerf every single power in the game to the ground, or you can cut out all that time and change the core mechanic.[/QUOTE]
I see this as the truth. 10char limits do suck btw
Invuln and Defiance being good against inconsequential henchmen waves is working as intended. LR being vulnerable to henchmen was pointed out long ago, instead of changing LR they made it so BCR+LR made you immune to henchmen instead. Henchmen are there to represent the legions of mooks superheros effortlessly blast through on their way to the Supervillain. In WoW terms they are trash packs and time fillers before the boss encounter.
Someone soloed teleio by using a damaging block and Regen. How does nerfing Invuln or defiance help that again?
You will never have anything resembling the "challenge" you desire in this game until buff stacking is addressed, period. You can nerf every single power in the game to the ground, or you can cut out all that time and change the core mechanic.
HUGE difference between Mega Terak and Teliosaurus. You're definitely not going to kill her with a damaging block. just sayin'
You're thinking Mega-Terak. Teleiosaurus will not die with just block and Regeneration.
*snort* My main in her regen-abomination build does not include Mega-terrak on the list of critters that you bother to block :rolleyes:.
That said, monsters don't have a damage profile anything like players, except maybe Jack Fool, and seriously, I want whatever claws framework he takes his powers from!
But, to put things back in the context of this thread: Hey Devs, every time you split damage like these new attacks are rife with, you throw that power on the scrap heap. Whatever your spread sheet is telling you about the trade-offs modifiying the power cost or attack speed or whatever when you do that... IT'S WRONG.
...which in reality works for nearly every encounter in the game since very few mobs have heals.
i would have loved to see him try that against Teliosaurus.
Terak is a good noobcheck/benchmark for a "Tough" build
Heck, most of my builds can 1v1 MTerak in a matter of 5 minutes and win (FREE LOOT!)
Or, try that against 5-man SL Elite
Or the Left hand
Or, Demonflame/aftershock 5-man elite
After all, the damage to one target from a 36 legend is nowhere near a 40 cosmic or elite-5 consistent, especially with those instawin beams from left hand or those pesky brickbusters
Are the effects on advantaged Open Palm Strike final? I admit, apart from the missing sound effects, I expected something a bit more substantial the few glowy lines....
Are the effects on advantaged Open Palm Strike final? I admit, apart from the missing sound effects, I expected something a bit more substantial the few glowy lines....
Sorry, a bit disappointed with the effects....
Open Palm strike
Yea i was thinking something more along the lines of chest beam for FX. I could be wrong but the FX seem to be a 2 dimensional object and tends to look weird at some angles. Can we get an actual 3d cylinder for this power?
I've got a suggestion or two! Hopeful at least.
For a Rush Buff, Unarmed has Dragon Kick which is a fair more bit expensive than other Dragon Attacks (Except Bite, which has a confusing cost)
I would like to see an alternate Dragon-Something for people who don't want to have a charged AoE/Kick/Stun to get Rush. The Candidates in the set for a good single target punch already exist in Open Palm Strike, Leaping Uppercut, or Burning Chi Fist. Of course these are all Tier 3 and don't exactly follow the damage/cost/charge scale of other Dragon attacks.
With this pass, Unarmed would have three tier 3 attacks, but no alternate rush provider that is a less expensive choice to Dragon's Kick.
Open Palm Strike's Tooltip is showing the advantage's damage progression above the actual power when you examine it in the advantage purchase window, and when you look at the power window. This should be re-arranged.
I've got a suggestion or two! Hopeful at least.
For a Rush Buff, Unarmed has Dragon Kick which is a fair more bit expensive than other Dragon Attacks (Except Bite, which has a confusing cost)
I would like to see an alternate Dragon-Something for people who don't want to have a charged AoE/Kick/Stun to get Rush. The Candidates in the set for a good single target punch already exist in Open Palm Strike, Leaping Uppercut, or Burning Chi Fist. Of course these are all Tier 3 and don't exactly follow the damage/cost/charge scale of other Dragon attacks.
With this pass, Unarmed would have three tier 3 attacks, but no alternate rush provider that is a less expensive choice to Dragon's Kick.
I second this so hard. MA really needs another Rush Proc that's not an AoE. How about turning Leaping Uppercut into Dragon Uppercut?
Comments
So much for getting a complete list up on the wiki.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Tweak the diminishing returns algorithms better so that by themselves or in small combinations buffs stay fairly potent, but when highly stacked they become much less effective. I can get onboard that train.
And I have complete 100% faith in the dev team. While I haven't necessarily agreed with everything they've done, by and large it's all been good.
Elbow Slam w/ Falling Hammer: I don't like the idea behind the Falling Hammer adv. The mobs where you'd want the bonus damage are immune to knocks and stuns. Everything else dies so fast it doesn't matter. The disorient on the base power may be somewhat thematic but serves no purpose in the MA set mechanically.
Leaping Uppercut w/ Chi Flame: Trading a flat 20% damage boost for a 10% damage boost, damage type shift and a piddly DoT is not worth it. Feels more like a 1 point advantage. The animation still makes me cringe. Rename it to "Hopping Uppercut" for more truth in advertising.
Backhand Chop w/ Stinging Bee: Allows stacking of the Unarmed focus up to 8 stacks. If you have a focus toggle that's not the Unarmed toggle you can have 16 Focus stacks total. Only one focus stack is possible if a focus toggle is not active. Energy is always granted allowing for double ticks of energy if you crit while using Form of the Tempest.
Open Palm Strike w/ Focused Chi Blast: Occasionally shows the character hitting twice on one activation. I was unable to use this power at max range (25 feet) as I would get a "Must have a target" error despite having a target.
Rising Knee w/ Flowing Strikes: Lose the two strike limit on the Flowing Strikes advantage and it *might* be worthwhile if it wasn't that outside of theme there's still no real reason to bother with this power.
Shuriken Storm w/ Floating Butterfly: Just when it was getting to be slightly different from Lead Tempest it gets nearly the same advantage...
Since the line between melee and ranged is being further blurred, why persist with melee/ranged specific buffs, debuffs and roles? Open Palm Strike w/ Focused Chi Blast is ranged, as in it's outside of melee range, yet is buffed by Brawler and Focus. There never was a reason to have such differences in the first place and the continual adding of ranged melee powers is insulting.
I just found a Bug with backhand chop advantage there isn't a cap on the amount of focus stacks it gives, so you can have two focus powers up at once with full stacks of 8, such as, the Form of the Tempest and the Form of the Master that backhand chop advantage gives.
Why does this not surprise me.
A bit late, but what we need is a PVP focussed powerset where you can cherry pick powers that help in pvp. Like a 5 second buff power for avengers that grants armour pen on all attacks etc etc.
I agree in absolute with Falchoin's comments, and I want to re emphasize what I quoted.
or
"...causing every other tick of damage <> to instead be dealt as Dimensional Damage. ..."
However, I will also take this opportunity to say that the display of Advantages remains problematic and inconsistent as a general rule...two things that I view as problems are that of Advantages not showing their effect in tooltips for affected powers on the Power Tray (this impairs the usefulness of tooltips in explaining what the power will actually do), and the info display in the Powers Window not showing available Advantages (this seems like it should be as complete as the All Powers information).
This is DEX based, not from Imbue, if there was any confusion.
And as a reminder, Shuriken does a more dps and dpe in Guardian with 10 STR than Snapshot does in Avenger, unless the target is below 25% health in which case it's about even. If the target is below 25% health, Snapshot does 5% better. Unless the Shuriken user has some STR and/or Brawler, in which case Shuriken tops Snapshot in Snapshot's ideal condition. Oh yeah, Shuriken has a knockdown too.
like in the former pts build.
This was on a R3 Quarry build with a Form, it might perform slightly better in a WotW build, but not by much. If it performs the same against player Invuln, I'd say it's pretty much a complete waste of one advantage point.
-The Focused Chi Blast advantage could use slightly more range, and I wish it were a fireball. Really, that's all the feedback I have about that, it's actually quite nice.
-The Knee advantage seems to be good for following up with a R3 heavy hitter, or maybe Elbow. All in all, not that impressive, but kinda fun.
-The Elbow advantage is actually pretty nice, and could see using it in a crowd controlling tanker build. The disorient still feels out of place with the rest of the set, nothing else really works with it.
-Rising Uppercut's advantage is pretty lackluster. I don't see any reason to take it besides flavor unless you were making a DoT focused build. In which case, why are you making a DoT focused build?
Yeah... Even though it adds 50% penetration to the dimensional damage..? That's still uhh. 25% of the damage that actually gets through. IDF or invuln's absorption. Which is like 250-500 damage every half second for a critical hit.
Against things that aren't tanked it's not so bad,
Open Palm Strike suffers from Split Damage Syndrome. Splitting damage down the middle isn't really desirable unless it's actually going to be worthwhile. And now Open Palm Strike has a longer charge and maybe the same damage as EBB when ranked to 3. Less damage with the advantage. The range might compensate but it should be all one damage type or the other with a 3 point advantage.
the fact that it's a 3 point advantage is also odd. Is it really on par for utility with Crippling Challenge? A slightly extended melee AoE knock is only going to shine with one superstat, and even then you'd be better off with roomsweeper.
It almost doesn't matter what these powers do against NPCs. NPC are wads of dough with little ambition beyond hopping around and screaming for a few seconds before they die. I don't need more tools for killing wads of dough. I need tools to threaten the swarms of supertanks out there. None of these powers are shaking out to be a credible addition to to the first, or even second tier of effective attacks. Its almost a waste of animator time, not because new powers are a bad thing but because the grotesque disparity between actual effectiveness of powers comming out of the beloved spreadsheet is staggering. There are some core evaluation processes that are manifestly broken, and here comes another crop of "meh" as a result. I'm pretty good at math and I literally do not understand the parameters for a set of formulas that allows advantaged DW and infinte reiki resurgence to coexist with these as if they were equivalent offerings.
Be a little daring. Walk out on the wildside. Show some spunk. Make some powers that have the potential to shake up a frozen status quo.
Surprise, and maybe even amaze us.
I'm trying to see if it somehow lends itself to being a lead-in before a force cascade.
I have to agree that i really don't like the damage split on open palm strike.
For the dimensional damage with penetration: This.
I witnessed the dimensional damage penetration on these powers get shrugged off by invuln in a power house duel today and i am disappointed. And it would seem that the damage penetration isn't doing much in pve either.
Maybe its serving some purpose that im just overlooking but:
Ame i have to ask, what did you hope to accomplish by adding this small defense penetration to the dot?
It isn't striking fear in to any ones heart in pvp, and it isnt having a significant impact on the already cake walkish pve.
To be honest, i kinda wish you would just get rid of the damage penetration because i have the feeling that it will get in the way of us getting "real useful" 2ndary FX on these chi attacks. Damage penetration sounds good on paper, but if it only ends up being a "tease" and an excuse not to touch these powers any more, then i would rather not have them at all.
TL,DR
Make the damage penetration worth while (especially in pvp) or get rid of it.
This, you need to deal with the brawler exception powers. It's ludicrously imbalanced.
I'd guess you want to make the powers viable to certain concepts that may use them, but why shouldn't a hero who is good at shooting be better at throwing shuriken or rocks than a MA or hulk?
Why should brawlers who have a shuriken concept be treated better than a brawler who uses arrows?
These attempts to reward a few EXTREMELY UNIMAGINATIVE concepts are making PVP unfair, invalidating the point of roles, reducing the ability to actually build for REMOTELY UNIQUE concepts, and encouraging extreme twinking. Please just do not attempt to 'reward' a few limited concepts, and maybe then concept builds can actually be decently viable.
I can live with it. Try it with heroic flight on if you want to see a giant hash of graphical artifacts though...
Aww, just because you know at a glance its another blob of damage that going to just VANISH into the sucking maw of IDF/Invulnerability? What could possibly be disheartening about that?
To be fair, we don't have demanding content to use as a metric. If we use the current content as a yardstick and say "This is what should be difficult", we're going to be nerfing the loving hell out of nearly everything.
The first page after opening the Nemesis Database is accompannied by a continuous high speed beeping as if a button were being pressed extremely rapidly. This sound goes away after continuing to deeper pages.
I have a feeling that it will be impossible because each advantage is its own power but, i think it makes sense for the ghost hands graphical effect on 100 hands to be tied to the ghostly strikes advantage instead of rank 3 of the power.
But if you want us to use these built-in "combos", there needs to be incentive not to just use Leaping Uppercut again. It'll figure out to better damage. Given the extremely narrow timing window for using the adv. on Elbow Strike, a significantly stronger effect is in order I'd think. I like the idea of "combos", but they need to be worth using for the idea to work.
Actually, i don't think that's a fair statement.
I think that the quote from Kien in post # 47 has some examples of what should be difficult and there are others (like the end of resistance when your supposed to be piloting the destroid but ive herd people bragging about not needing to). And if you want a measuring stick so bad how hard is it to say that no player should be able to withstand more than (X) dps?
I'm sorry if im coming off as insensitive but this post sounds like "nerf paranoia" to me. I dont meant to put words in your mouth but it almost sounds as if your saying
"that there is nothing in this game that is supposed to be hard and if balancing this game means any nerfs then the game should remain unbalanced."
I want to restate that i think most of the overpowerednes comes from stacking certain affects to extreme levels. Most of the individual powers in this game that are overpowered, are not that overpowered.
PFF needs more of a buff than say, Defiance needs a nerf.
And speaking of buffs, there are way more powers in this game that need buffing than nerfing.
My vision of balance is more bringing the way powers interact under control (stacking) and bring the under performers up to speed (setting stricter standards for what various categories of powers should be able to do).
No need for a nerfgasum, but a few powers need to be turned down a few DB for a good mix. Pro Audio Reference
Invuln and Defiance being good against inconsequential henchmen waves is working as intended. LR being vulnerable to henchmen was pointed out long ago, instead of changing LR they made it so BCR+LR made you immune to henchmen instead. Henchmen are there to represent the legions of mooks superheros effortlessly blast through on their way to the Supervillain. In WoW terms they are trash packs and time fillers before the boss encounter.
Someone soloed teleio by using a damaging block and Regen. How does nerfing Invuln or defiance help that again?
You will never have anything resembling the "challenge" you desire in this game until buff stacking is addressed, period. You can nerf every single power in the game to the ground, or you can cut out all that time and change the core mechanic.
I see this as the truth. 10char limits do suck btw
HUGE difference between Mega Terak and Teliosaurus. You're definitely not going to kill her with a damaging block. just sayin'
Oh damn, you are right.
*snort* My main in her regen-abomination build does not include Mega-terrak on the list of critters that you bother to block :rolleyes:.
That said, monsters don't have a damage profile anything like players, except maybe Jack Fool, and seriously, I want whatever claws framework he takes his powers from!
But, to put things back in the context of this thread: Hey Devs, every time you split damage like these new attacks are rife with, you throw that power on the scrap heap. Whatever your spread sheet is telling you about the trade-offs modifiying the power cost or attack speed or whatever when you do that... IT'S WRONG.
...which in reality works for nearly every encounter in the game since very few mobs have heals.
i would have loved to see him try that against Teliosaurus.
Terak is a good noobcheck/benchmark for a "Tough" build
Heck, most of my builds can 1v1 MTerak in a matter of 5 minutes and win (FREE LOOT!)
Or, try that against 5-man SL Elite
Or the Left hand
Or, Demonflame/aftershock 5-man elite
After all, the damage to one target from a 36 legend is nowhere near a 40 cosmic or elite-5 consistent, especially with those instawin beams from left hand or those pesky brickbusters
Sorry, a bit disappointed with the effects....
This is based on animation used and not its actual usability within the archetype.
Yea i was thinking something more along the lines of chest beam for FX. I could be wrong but the FX seem to be a 2 dimensional object and tends to look weird at some angles. Can we get an actual 3d cylinder for this power?
Did Enrage always have the highly mechanical sounding "Doo-be'beep"? It just seems odd with the growl animation.
Oooh. Is that what's doing it? Cool. Thank you. That I can probably fix myself then
For a Rush Buff, Unarmed has Dragon Kick which is a fair more bit expensive than other Dragon Attacks (Except Bite, which has a confusing cost)
I would like to see an alternate Dragon-Something for people who don't want to have a charged AoE/Kick/Stun to get Rush. The Candidates in the set for a good single target punch already exist in Open Palm Strike, Leaping Uppercut, or Burning Chi Fist. Of course these are all Tier 3 and don't exactly follow the damage/cost/charge scale of other Dragon attacks.
With this pass, Unarmed would have three tier 3 attacks, but no alternate rush provider that is a less expensive choice to Dragon's Kick.
I second this so hard. MA really needs another Rush Proc that's not an AoE. How about turning Leaping Uppercut into Dragon Uppercut?
... amazing idea, actually. This would be very cool. Certainly has my vote.
Agreed!!! Lets give MA some love it's about time.
Nah, make it Rising Dragon. Sounds cooler.