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Bestial Changes for synergy
championshewolf
Posts: 4,376 Arc User
The following ideas are basic changes to bestial to increase synergy in the set as a whole. All these changes are meant as suggestions for something quick and potentially possible within the time frame, and though I would like more powers added save it for later. The only powers listed will be the advantages and abilities of existing powers in the set that I think need to see a change with the intent to add more synergy, as a whole, to the set.
Bleeds
Shred (This has been updated so removed)
Bite
Massacre
Frenzy (This is now a combo power)
Pounce
Howl
Aspect of the Bestial
Bleeds
+ Double Bleeds base damage output.
+ Give Bleeds the ability to partially ignore shields or resistance.
+ Give Bleeds the ability to partially ignore shields or resistance.
Shred (This has been updated so removed)
Bite
+ Add Crippling Challenge to Bite.
+ New 3 Point Advantage; Vampiric Tendencies
- Bite now removes all Bleed effects on the target. For each Bleed effect removed, the biter heals a small amount of health.
+ New 3 Point Advantage; Vampiric Tendencies
- Bite now removes all Bleed effects on the target. For each Bleed effect removed, the biter heals a small amount of health.
Massacre
+ Massacre refreshes all stacks of Bleed currently on the target.
+ Bloody Mess changed to a 1 point advantage and bonus damage reduced to 15%.
+ New 1 Point Advantage; Terrfiying Strike
- Whenever you strike a feared target with a fully charged Massacre, Massacre now deals 25% increased damage.
+ Bloody Mess changed to a 1 point advantage and bonus damage reduced to 15%.
+ New 1 Point Advantage; Terrfiying Strike
- Whenever you strike a feared target with a fully charged Massacre, Massacre now deals 25% increased damage.
Frenzy (This is now a combo power)
+ Frenzy now has a 15% chance per attack to inflict Bleed.
+ Enrage refresher removed from Frenzy.
+ Fear Sense changed to a 1 point advantage and bonus damage reduced to 15%.
+ Enrage refresher removed from Frenzy.
+ Fear Sense changed to a 1 point advantage and bonus damage reduced to 15%.
Pounce
+ Furious Rush changed from increasing damage by 30% while Enraged, to becoming a ranged AE in a 10 foot circle area that affects up to 5 targets.
Howl
+ Enrage buff removed from Howl.
+ Howl instead grants 5%/10%/15% to damage and haste for the user and team members, and inflicts fear on the enemies.
+ Howl gains Challenging Strikes Advantage. Challenging Strikes threat bonus set to scale to the recharge time of Howl.
+ Howl instead grants 5%/10%/15% to damage and haste for the user and team members, and inflicts fear on the enemies.
+ Howl gains Challenging Strikes Advantage. Challenging Strikes threat bonus set to scale to the recharge time of Howl.
Aspect of the Bestial
+ New 2 Point Advantage: Hunter's Guile
- Whenever you gain a stack of Enrage, Hunter's Guile grants or refreshes Defiant. You can only gain one stack of Defiant with this advantage.
Alternative Advantage
+ New 3 Point Advantage: Bloodlust
- Whenever you inflict a bleed to a target, your character gains a stack of and refreshes Bloodlust. Each stack of Bloodlust reduces the cast time of bestial powers by 0.05 seconds. Bloodlust can stack up to 5 times. Bloodlust lasts for 12 seconds.
- Whenever you gain a stack of Enrage, Hunter's Guile grants or refreshes Defiant. You can only gain one stack of Defiant with this advantage.
Alternative Advantage
+ New 3 Point Advantage: Bloodlust
- Whenever you inflict a bleed to a target, your character gains a stack of and refreshes Bloodlust. Each stack of Bloodlust reduces the cast time of bestial powers by 0.05 seconds. Bloodlust can stack up to 5 times. Bloodlust lasts for 12 seconds.
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Don't give pounce a 15% chance to inflict bleed. No other standard lunges have tertiary effects, so even a small one like this shouldn't slip. Instead, I'd say that Furious rush should now grant a stack of bleed if you lunge from 20ft or further away, and refresh all bleeds otherwise.
The enrage refresher on Frenzy is good, it should be kept but only proc if it's used against a bleeding target.
Backed into a corner kinda feels like it should trigger when you're in a pinch, rather then getting the advantage in a fight. I'd suggest renaming this "Hunter's Blood" or something similar.
Howl needs something more. I'd give it a +energy effect for every stack of bleed on affected enemies.
I have to agree with swedsandbro on Pounce. It's a standard lunge, and shouldn't have an effect outside the snare/ >20 effect standard.
For Frenzy, it should still apply/refresh enrage. Also it probably shouldn't change to a maintain, it's about the only AoE that benefits from Combo power boosts, and Bestial is the only set I know of that has two combo powers that someone might legitimately use. All I'd do is give the power an additional chance to apply enraged for every bleeding enemy hit.
A possible addition to your list. I think Enraged still scales with strength, right? If that's the case, I'd like to see a 1 point advantage for Aspect of the Bestial called "Nimble Savage" that would let us have Enraged scale off dexterity instead of strength.
I do like the rest of it though.
Maybe.
A common misconception, but Frenzy is not and never has been a combo power. The combo power of bestial is Shred. Enrage refreshing, if it gets bleed ticks, is redundant and no longer needed. Not to mention refreshing enrage doesn't give energy and I doubt they will ever let any set step on Brick's toes.
Changing enrage mechanics would probably take more work than they could put in and that you would just want focus, at that point I would just tell you to take the single blade focus power if you want to get focus from bleed attacks.
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Elaboration fail on my part. Challenging strikes isn't an issue. Have a Challenging strikes party, but I don't think that would be enough to make the power at a level where it is worth taking over other options. There are better team buffs, and better fear appliers/debuffs. Howl tries to do both, and doesn't seem to do well at either. It could just be my CoH roots, and the silly levels buff/debuffs were over there that's skewing my frame of reference though.
As for making it work, I imagine it'd be similar to Reaper's Embrace's bonus damage per stack of bleed. Just giving endurance, AoE, and not removing the bleeds.
Lies and deceit! Now I want to find where I saw it as a combo, but if it's not then groovy maintain away!
But, enraged refreshing was important in low levels, as it boosted shred considerably. The approach for Frenzy shouldn't take that away, but instead try to translate the effect better in higher levels. If a chance for enraged off of bleeding enemies, in addition to the initial Apply/refresh isn't enough, then perhaps making the power Apply/refresh and have your 15% chance to bleed, per attack, but when enraged.
Making stuff up on the spot, and speaking from a position of knowing nothing.
I'd imaging the scaling is handled as a matter of the effect itself rather than something that's hard coded into the engine. Either way, barring any stupid code interactions (I.E handling the enraged scaling as a matter of engine operation rather than part of the effect), it wouldn't be that hard.
Take your enraged effect (Scaled by strength) x (1 - (Nimble Savage Mod)) + enraged effect (Scaled by Dexterity) x (0 + (Nimble Savage Mod))
Wish it was lies, but no, I brought this up during On Alert beta, hat it wasn't a combo power. And I always thought, back then, it should have been. Then I changed my tune because bestial needs a maintain and all other powers similar to frenzy are maintains. So if it's not a combo it should be a maintain.
As for the enrage thing, if Frenzy can cause bleeds, giving it a stack of enrage, or an enrage refresher naturally at this point would be overkill. Bleeds would do more for you in the long term, damage wise, than enrage would, and 1 stack of enrage won't take you anywhere far, really.
Again, I would just say take Form of the Swordsman. It does exactly what you want it to do, and you get a stack of focus from every bleed you inflict.
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Cleave, blade tempest and reapers caress (with adv) are all the aoe combo powers I can think of.
I can not think of any other power that has a 1point damage bonus adv., is there a precedent?
Fair enough
If the enraged refresh really didn't do anything, being redundant while you're already enraged, then it wouldn't be overkill.
Besides...
Focus doesn't interact with Shred or Pounce or other powers that interact with enraged. It becomes a trade for Dex scaling damage buff and half as many bleeds.
I personally think the form buffs should all have SS scaling, but I'm willing to trade an advantage point to tailor the power to fit the build/concept if that's more likely. I'm not so willing to take my berserker alien hybrid and trade bleed frequency and concept for scaling the power to a stat I'm using.
And if I -did- use focus, Frenzy and Howl would be my two choices for building enraged, and my lovely alien doesn't so much bark at the moon as he makes you say goodbye to your ribcage.
Yes; Skewer, Howl, Shadow Embrace, Ebon Void, Force Shield, and quite a few others. These particular boosts require specific stipulations.
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That's the choice you have to make in the end. Do you want faster bleeding or do you want to scale of Dex. I doubt Crush will make a significant change like that. Bestial isn't so much a dex set as it is a strength set. Not to mention dex is completely replaceable in the new system as it stands. If he added the change, the best you could hope for is it would make Bestial grant focus, not change enrage mechanics which would probably require a complete re-write of the power.
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As is the beast would be better off with Reapers Embrace to make use of all the bleeds rather than Massacre which might have difficulty consuming all the bleeds beastial can make.
Like I said hypothetical, currently we live in the ridiculous world where SB is better off taking bite or shred from beastial to stack bleeds with yet beastial which can stack bleeds so easily (in comparison) only requires the one bleed to boost Massacre. Change the bleed to shred and it makes more sense to me.
Beastial IMO needs (amongst other things I guess) a late game AOE, Frenzy is good for most of the game but runs out of oomph a bit when you get to MI and beyond.
Howl would be a very intersting attack to put CS on to and it makes a lot of sense conceptually.
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Only if you are looking for burst damage. Otherwise you will kill your DPS with ruptures.
Single blade is still a stronger set, over all, than bestial because of Swallowtail and the fact it gets rupture for burst damage.
Hence why I suggested changing fear sense to a 1 point advantage. This would give it a stronger AE presence, especially if it is made a maintain effect instead of the current tap effect it is.
Dunno why I never thought of Challenging Strikes on Howl before, it makes perfect sense, actually.
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This does nothing to Bestial. It's still plagued with the same issues namely the enrage/fear/bleed mechanics that are poorly supported (in fact he Enrage application on powers is almost useless now considering the changes to Enrage and AotB).
What set are we balancing Bestial against? Even after those changes it still does nothing to help it. Heck Reaper's is a better power for a bestial build than Massacre or Bite. Secondly, the adv on most Bestial powers are absurdly unoriginal.
Mechanical problems Bestial has:
1. BLEEDS are a joke and incredibly useless for melee. Just think of how convenient range is for applying DOTs and compare that to melee. Compare Infernal's ability to apply DOTs to Bestial's. There is a night and day difference which won't change due to Ifernal's range and AoE capabilities of applying DoTs (not to mention them dealing more damage).
2. Fear is applied by one bestial power (Howl) and used by one (Frenzy) and ONLY if you take the advantage. I don't understand how they could do something like this. Fear should whether get more support or be removed and replaced with something usefull.
Bite and Massacre need a buff to DW, DC, DU, Reaper's etc. level. There is no point in having the OP discussion because unless they nerf all the "OP" powers Bite and Massacre just fall behind.
They have to make Bestial a competitive and fun set to play in comparison to other sets. There is no justifiable reason why Bestial should fall so far behind all the MA sets.
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I agree that either more powers need to interact with fear, I like having the effect on Roar because it lowers damage coming in, and makes it easier for Regen to heal up.
Also, maybe it's my feelings towards some vampire RPers in this game, but I almost wanna name Vampiric Tendency to something like Dire Feast.
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I am basing these changes on something fast, because Crush has already said he can't do a full power review. I would love to get more powers in Bestial, but I would rather see a small bone thrown now, get more synergy in the set as a whole, and save a full power review for later when he has the time for it.
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It's supposed to deal damage over time, not to keep characters from using charge powers or even just interacting with objects. Seriously, why can't we pick up a box or open a door just because of a flesh wound? Deadly Poison doesn't do that. :rolleyes:
I agree. How about the Karkaradons' Thrashing Bite?
Constntly switching between claw weapons and natural claws doesn't really scream 'synergy', now does it? Shred sure is useful for Bestial, but I'd rather not have Bleed removed for it.
Oh I see well then those are my suggestions:
Howl:
- make Howl work like Miniaturization Device (decrease dmg and movement speed). The only thing they need to do is buff the dmg reduction of Fear for this power and maybe turn "Make them Tremble" into a 1 pt advantage + increase the radius of the power based on rank so that at R3 we get about 50ft AoE (or just increase it to 50ft by default).
Reasoning: Howl is currently pointless. If you wanted to decrease the dmg of enemies you would take mini device as such there is no compelling reason why Howl should be this weak. Furthermore, since it's a PbAoE it should get a higher radius (per rank) since you can't apply it like mini on a 100ft power if you wanted to. It also makes more thematic sense IMO. Mini-device and Howl are quite similar it's just that Mini is >>>>>>>>>>> Howl.
Massacre:
- whether it gets a flat dmg increase or innate % crit severity or % crit chance or % damage penetration or Ruptures. One of these to bring it up to the others lvl (whichever is simpler)
Bite:
- whether it gets a flat dmg increase or innate % crit severity or % crit chance or % damage penetration or Ruptures. One of these to bring it up to the others lvl (whichever is simpler)
Aspect of the Bestial:
- should have endorphin rush adv (why does it not have it?) or what silver suggested I'm cool with that as well.
Frenzy:
- ability to apply Bleeds? Bestial has no means to apply them in an AoE fashion. (considering they want to keep the bleeds mechanic, as I said for Fear, if they want to keep it they should support it better)
Shredded debuff:
- If they can add this to bestial I'd be all up for it but I don't know how easy/difficult it is to change powers in CO.
Bleeds:
- higher base damage than Poison at the very least
Reason: Look at Infernal and notice why even if Bleeds would work like Poison the problems is that Bestial lacks the range and the AoE capabilities to apply Bleeds properly. That's why IMO they should remove DoTs from melee powers. Infernal is a prime example of how DoTs should work and why they won't work with melee.
@DEVS: Would it be possible for you to give us an incremental list from less difficult to most difficult in terms of changes you can do to a power
ie. increase base damage is easier than adding an innate % crit severity (like DC). It would help make suggesting things easier if we knew how feasible they are.
What? You realize Massacre does the same damage as the other powers you mentioned plus gets knock damage boost.
You realize Bite got its damage boosted a long time ago, and it's aa tier 1 power. it's not going to get rupture. Furthermore it has a 100% chance to inflict bleed.
Bleeds do have a higher base damage than poison, the problem right now is that poison can stack to 10. And stacking bleeds to 10 would be bad due to rupture.
I've never had a problem applying bleeds. The only thing Infernal has is Epidemic, but with lunge and using it right I can get into range. If frenzy get's bleed capability then that is all fine and well.
Infernal dots work exactly how bleed dots work, so really I don't know what you are getting at. The only thing that infernal has is the capability to stack more, so the best solution without causing problems else where is to increase bleed damage and possibly allow it to ignore some resistance like toxic does.
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Silver, do you play any other type of toons except for your Bestial one? I made a couple of builds to compare and Bestial does not even come close to a MA one.
Yes, been playing quite a few. And I actually compare numbers to. Most of your ideas seem to date back when Bestial was in test, which is kind of outmoded. Your numbers also fail to take into fact other considerations. Massacre costs less, Reapers costs way more, if you want to compare it to that. You figure your damage by what special they have, Massacre has knock damage bonus which is a 30% damage multiplier after the fact, doesn't require random chance and pretty much always consistent.
If you are going to talk about actually playing a set and looking at the numbers, then yea, they are comparable. Your tests and ideas seem to neglect a lot of factors with these powers.
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I wan't expecting the changes to shred and Frenzy on the PTS, and will probably toy with those a bit tonight, however the 10% boost to damage for Shred looks fairly nice. But I think the response you gave me, regarding my suggestion for Howl, might want to be directed to the Frenzy change. They have the Endurance cost going down for each hit with constant damage, but it would be more useful to get constant endurance cost with damage going up each hit.
How do the changes coming up change your suggestions, if at all?
Well won't have much impact.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the issue with enrage, defiance, and focus is that those stacks are sort of "premade" buffs which are locked to a particular stat, and their respective powers simple allow you to have more than 1 of said buff-stack.
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That's what I was meaning in the earlier post about stupid code interactions. Standard Code Ranting myself first: If I had to put money, I'd imagine the effect was a hidden function of the stat it scales off. If that's true it should simply be spreadsheet magic to change it.
Looking at the Mecha-Teddy scaling thread, it says there's a .033% increase to each stack of the enraged buff per point of strength. This tells me that the buff is displayed as a single number, but really exists as:
Base damage buff + ( Strength * .033 )
If that's true, then it would not be a difficult matter at all to either make it scale to super stats or add an advantage that changes the stat that the buff scales with. Strength is used to scale, then strength has to be called as a variable at some point, that means you change what variable is being called or add new variables and math magic the ones you dont want away.
How would the power AotB be able to change which stat it scales off using an advantage? If you made an advantage "Nimble Savage" the advantage would have to do something. What it would do is set a hidden "usedex" flag to 1. If the flag is not 1 then it's 0. Then every enraged buff value would be changed to the following:
Base damage buff + ( (Strength * ( 1 - "usedex" ) * .033) + ( Dexterity * ( 0 + "usedex" ) * .033 ) )
This would mean that if you have the advantage, the strength scale would return zero while the dexterity scale applies, and without the advantage the dex scale would come to zero while the strength scale works as it does now.
Of course that's assuming that the effect exists as a formula hidden by a single number, and not some crazy-stupid interaction of many different systems. If that is the case, it'd be a simple (though potentially tedious) task.
It'd still be better to have these powers scale to super stats, but like I said, I'm willing to spend an advantage point to have it run off dexterity instead.
But again, that's less important right now, and something that'd be a bit distracting from attempts to get these other powers improved. Something to mention in a discussion thread on potential things, but when they're actively looking at powers and the scale of change is as small as a 10% boost to one power's damage and lowering the endurance cost of another, thats a "choose the hills you're willing to die for" moment.
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Ok, so making sure I've got this right. Regeneration goes back to scaling with Recovery like it used to and if you want a defensive passive that scales with strength you can take Invulerability and my dexterity user is stuck with lightning reflexes again, that is unless you want to build in the stat you need?
They've already changed what stat's many powers scale with, and they did so to get rid of the "Strength Based/Recovery Based" idea. It took a little getting used to, coming back and not having to spec very specific stats for certain powers. And having 3 SSs, that one threw me through a big loop.
And I'm so terribly confused how you can say it'll throw balance off after talking about how focus is exactly what I'm asking for and I should just use it, build my one stack of enraged elsewhere, and not worry about concept so much. Yet enraged scaling of dex, apparently doing the same thing as focus, is unbalanced. Especially after talking up strength so much and cutting on how dexterity "isn't doing as much as people think".
You can completely replace Dex with crit gear in the game now. You are really hung up on Dex, and enrage is strength based. If you want a form based on dex, well you have the martial arts forms just for that.
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The difference, as I understand it, is that all "normal" passives give a series of buffs which simply look to your superstats and scale accordingly. Defiance, Enrage, the Forms, etc, instead enable you to gain stacks of a completely separate buff, which is "hard coded" to be based on a fixed stat. Since those buffs can be granted by other powers, independent of their related passives, tying said buff to a specific stat sort of steers the type of play one exhibits if they want to take advantage of it - it's why 2GM now makes you "concentrated" if you fully maintain it instead of granting you enrage. If regen granted you stacks of a buff called "regenerate" which was fixed based on recovery, then it would likely still be that way as well. It's probably also why, IIRC, regen doesn't scale w/ PRE like other heals.
Again, if I'm wrong in my statements, I apologize.
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((Again, assuming some rationality behind how these powers are applied. I've seen some roundabout crap (especially in CoH
And that's why it's potentially tedious. Take the example I gave, it is "Hard coded" to both dex and str. Powers that use super stats are "soft-coded" to call on whatever they player specifies as their SSs. Hard coded has it specifically look up a specified stat no matter what. The original passives were hard coded to specific stats, prior to being changed. The tedium becomes, if there are many versions of the same buff that are called on. Say AotB called an enraged buff, specified just for it, that is different from the enraged buff that's called by Frenzy. Due to the way it calls a specified stat, each one would have to be changed.
That's the challenge with hard-coded, well that or they have the engine itself handle all scaling in some roundabout way, but like I said that would be so terribly strange when you could just specify the buff and hard-code the scaling into the buff itself much easier. Even stranger considering the history with the passives.
If there's one enraged buff specified, that all these powers use and call from the database, then only one change is needed. However if there are, say, a dozen or a hundred versions of the enraged buff being called on by different powers, each one would have to be changed to reflect the new scaling. Passives would be easier as there is only one version of each, I.E there are no powers other than the Regeneration passive, that grants regeneration so there's no way to have three different regeneration buffs that need to be changed. There are plenty of heal over time powers, but only one "Regeneration" granting power.
If that makes any sense to you. I'm not saying that there's anything that the form does to the buff right now. What I'm saying is that the buff most likely exists somewhere in the database, and it's most likely got the scaling hard coded into it instead of scaling as an aspect of the engine. If that's the case, the issue isn't changing the buff, the issue is how many versions of the buff need to be changed. Also, if needed a completely different object could be added as an advantage to the form, which is coded to the buff effect as well.
But again, SS scaling would be best if they did anything.
Anyway, I got some time to look at the more numbers side of your suggestions Silverspar. A few issues I have:
Massacare seems weaker with your suggestion, with the same investment of advantage points, against bleeding targets, which is practically a gimme with bestial. Only winning against bleeding and feared targets, but not by much, and not enough to justify the restriction.
Right now you can take R2 and blood mess for 1.2 x (1 + .3) = 1.56 damage (count R1 as 1, R2 as 1.2, and rank 3 as 1.4). If I take the highest damage 4 advantage point configuration available with your suggestion, I'm doing 1.2 x (1 + (.15 + .25) = 1.68 damage. An 8% increase for 4 advantage points against enemies that must be both feared and bleeding. Removing the fear restriction gives us a maximum of 1.4 damage for 4 advantage points. Adding the new Blood mess means for 5 points invested you're doing 1.4 * (1 + .15) = 1.61 or a very small 3% increase for the 1 point spent over R2 + Blood mess. And despite this, R3 is still pointless as you could take 3 points to do your new blood mess + R2 and do 1.2 * ( 1 + .15) = 1.38 damage vs 4 points for the R3 1.4 damage.
The ability to refresh bleeds would be nice, but not on a power that has a bleed depentant ability, and definitley not at such a cost to it's ability to spend advantage points for additional damage.
What I would suggest is removing the +damage vs bleeding targets from blood mess. Massacre would have it's base damage increased 1.2x and endurance cost increased 1.4x to bring it more in line with the bigger heavy hitters. This would also serve to make R3 Massacre a viable choice vs blood mess as R2 with advantage would deal less damage than R3, and R3 would deal more than what we have now with R2 + blood mess so players wouldn't lose damage from now if they chose to go R3.
Blood mess would be changed to apply Trauma on bleeding targets and Fear bleeding targets + nearby enemies if the target is bleeding. Providing another method for Bestial Characters to apply fear, and giving the very useful trauma.
That sounds like a mess reading it back so to break it down.
Now (Considering bleeds as gimme's):
4 points spent -> R2 + Blood mess = 1.2 * (1 + .3) = 1.56 damage
4 points spent -> R3 = 1.4 damage
Proposed (this is adding the 1.2x damage buff and 1.4x endurance cost to our present base):
4 points spent -> R2 + Blood mess = 1.2 * 1.2 = 1.44 damage + Trauma and AoE fear
4 points spent -> R3 = 1.4 * 1.2 = 1.68 damage
So the new R2 would do better against non-bleeding targets, worse against bleeders (which would be often), and compensate for new debuff potential.
R3 would finally do more damage than R2 + advantage, and would do so consistantly, making it more of a decision between point spending options.
However the Idea you had for refreshing bleeds was nice, but I don't think appropriate for a power dependant on bleeds. I would suggest adding that to Frenzy. Actually you could do it in a similar way that it handles the enraged buff. On third hit, Frenzy applies or refreshes enraged, and applies a bleed to all enemies, or refreshes bleeds to enemies already bleeding. So frenzy would never apply more than one bleed. And if Frenzy stayed a combo instead of maintain, you could probably convince them to turn it into a PBAoE with those effects.
It's also probably not a good idea to tie the removal of bleeds to your new bite advantage. Bite is already 89% of Massacre, cutting DPS even more for a small health boost wouldn't make Bite a desireable choice compared to Massacre. I do like the idea, but I don't think it should remove the bleeds. Also, I don't know if it should be an advantage, or a natural part of the power. The power does quite a bit naturally, but I don't know if it's worth it when compared to the Massacre option. And with shred, it's a difficult middle-child situation, trying to make it fit. It's one to keep thinking about.
1) Aggressor will add additional stacks of enrage for each rank with respect to Aspect of Bestial which can function as the one in the Might powerset.
2) The giant growth in the enrage provide additional damage and resistance.
3) A tank with bestial supernatural powers and regeneration as passive should have more HP to make them more survival in either pve or pvp.
I want this change bad. I'm kind of getting tired of using Devour Essence on my vampire character, but truth be told, Devour Essence feels more vampire-like than Bite does. I don't know about making Vampiric Tendencies cost 3 points and being a "small" heal. Either it's a small heal and 1 point, or a decent heal and 2 points. Any proc that requires building up/consuming bleeds shouldn't be "meh" in the end, if you know what I mean.
The other reason why I like this suggestion is because the Aspect change that came with On Alert made Furor Venenum kinda pointless with it's Enrage proc. At least Howl applies Enrage to other teammates (and Fear to enemies), so it's more like a Support power. Not to mention we got Frenzy and it's Enrage proc too. Too many Enrage procs with Beastial! >.<
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Currently the three primary ST damage attacks are Shred, Bite, and Massacre. Of the three Bite has the lowest damage, and isn't as effective at applying stacks of bleed.
The thought that I had the other day, and have been tossing around in my head, turn Bite into a highly customizable utility power with a number of advantages to choose from. Instead of an advantage that lets the player choose "Power x, or this version of power x", turn Bite into a venerable "Build-a-bear workshop" except, you know, for ripping peoples throats out.
Bump the damage up the 11% to current Massacre levels, to make the ranks viable choices, and add a slew of advantages for players to choose from, to tweak the power to their build.
We've got:
Control -> "Furor Venenum" (2pts)
Survivability -> "Vampiric Tendencies" (3pts) (You were thinking around 75-80 pts of heal per bleed stack?)
Lets add:
Debuff option 1 -> "That's not sanitary" -> When fully charged, Bite applies a stack of Poison, and doubles all stacks of poison on the target. (2pts)
Debuff option 2 -> "Go for the Throat" -> When fully charged, Bite applies Trauma, and doubles all stacks of Bleed on the target (2pts)
With that, make Massacre comprable to heavy hitters, and establish it's place as the damaging power after the buffs that Bite gets.
-> Buff it's damage by 1.2x and increase the endurance cost 1.4x
-> Instead of allowing it to rupture vs bleeding targets, give it a "Hard Frost" type effect where it gets a single tic of extra damage vs bleed, but doesn't consume the bleeds. Reaper's Embrace would get 293 per bleed stack, but would remove bleed stacks. Massacre would get 293, regardless of number of bleeds, but would not consume the bleed stacks.
Anyway, Bestial Buffs Plox!
Would you be open to some new power suggestions as well as other changes?
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Agreed I was supprised that the Bloody Mess advantage wasnt a rupture effect in the first place. I did propose making it into a rupture but the bonus damage from it seems to be more favourable, which can't really be argued with.
Bite being a rupture would be a nice addition as a rupture but I'd also like to see a claw addition powerwise which could act as a rupture:
Puncture - After Shredding your enemies to pieces and leaving them to bleed out, you opt to finish off any remaining foes with a truly devastating strike rupturing all and any bleeds that they might be suffering from.
- Would work like a single blade rupture
- FX would be the same movement as Shadow Strike but with a more bestial feel (perhaps having the claws come out the other side of the person)
I was thinking it could take advantage of bleed stacks perhaps in a similar way to single blade rupture or Shredded Debuff + Tiger's Bite?
Thoughts?
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[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
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I'm still not fully with you on Massacre, but the rest I feel is spot on.
The issue with Bestial isn't a lack of powers, rather, it's that many of the powers that exist don't fill the function that they need to, or don't seem to have a function and simply exist. Frenzy is a sorry AoE, and has driven a few players that I've seen, and myself, outside the framework for an AoE. It was very useful in the first 12 levels for applying enrage, but once AotB got turned on, there was no point.
Bite is the middle child between Shred and Massacre, and doesn't really fit in anywhere.
I don't/won't use howl (doesn't fit concept for my Bestial guy) but Silverspar's the only person I've heard say anything good about it, and I don't think that lasted very long.
When it comes to refreshing bleeds, my previous Frenzy suggestion would apply there. Right now, Frenzy Applies or Refreshes Enraged, how about making Frenzy also apply or refresh bleeds? Right now, for all the bleeds that Bestial has, there is no AoE bleed Applier. If the target hit by Frenzy's third hit is not bleeding, then they bleed. Anything that is bleeding has bleeds refreshed. I still think Frenzy should be a PBAoE, still a combo power, but a PBAoE combo power.
Hmm, this makes sense, fix innate issues then look at outside stuff as a possible additions.
Sounds familiar eh, Blkjack?
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
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