3 Years..and Rocket Launcher still sucks.

honestresearcher

You have to remain Absolutely Still!?
It has a cooldown!?
It takes 3 seconds to attempt to fire it!?

It (without synergies) Crits for between 5500-6000k (total for both figures together) and does less than 1k to adjacent targets.

Iv said it for a long time and still am quite omnipotent about it, this power is weak for what you need to do to fire it, especially in-combat.


Let us compare this power to one of its rivals (figures taken without synergy, using the same Dex/ego/int based gear):

Force Cascade:
3 second charge
bit more energy cost required to fire

Does 9600 Crit to ALL TARGETS caught
Knocks back ALL TARGETS by 115ft
Large Fall Damage.

--

Is Force Cascade just too strong? No. Rocket Launcher is just too weak, it's better to utilize Sniper Rifle with the Tungsten round, from the same power tree. Or even pick Defile! That puts a debuff for further toxic damage AND does a decent AoE DoT.

What would i like to see happen?
One of two options:

Energy Cost Increase
This power is a 3 second charge, if it supposed to be powerful it should be expensive, not cheap and therefor weak...making the 3 second charge a bit rediculous.
Damage increase 50-75%
Considering this isnt a Cylinder attack and a Small-area AoE (with no large knockback on top), the initial rocket damage should be more, or as potent as Force Cascade.


OR if it isnt intended to be a massive attack, then:


Take off the Cooldown
This power has never had a good reason to warrant a cooldown.
Reduce the time required to launch the attack, from 3 seconds to 2.5 (like Defile for example)

mrkunta

I was in a alert once and I saw a soldier do over 16000 dmg with rocket it crit for over 8000 twice

honestresearcher

Theres a lot i could compare with to show how bad this power is in comparison.

Dont need to tell anyone about Strafing Run :P yeah some of you are going shhhhh!

arri

There's a lot I can compare rocket launcher to that makes it seem good, too.

My Ego Blade Breach does at most 1k damage total. My Ebon Ruin does at most 1k damage total, fully charged (which, by the way, eats up your entire energy bar if you aren't SS endurance)

Shadow Embrace only does about 100-200 every .5 seconds, so while technically it's a stronger attack, in 3 seconds it only does 600-1200 damage.

Anything that can crit for more than 3k is absurdly powerful, it's just that people think that just because two or three abilities can do it, every ability has to be able to crit for 50k+ damage

fudgemonsta

arri wrote: »

Anything that can crit for more than 3k is absurdly powerful, it's just that people think that just because two or three abilities can do it, every ability has to be able to crit for 50k+ damage

Um...My EB's crit for 1.2k. Those numbers are a bit...Low...

honestresearcher

arri wrote: »

There's a lot I can compare rocket launcher to that makes it seem good, too.

My Ego Blade Breach does at most 1k damage total. My Ebon Ruin does at most 1k damage total, fully charged (which, by the way, eats up your entire energy bar if you aren't SS endurance)

Shadow Embrace only does about 100-200 every .5 seconds, so while technically it's a stronger attack, in 3 seconds it only does 600-1200 damage.

Anything that can crit for more than 3k is absurdly powerful, it's just that people think that just because two or three abilities can do it, every ability has to be able to crit for 50k+ damage

....

are you level 10?

arri

honestresearcher wrote: »

....

are you level 10?

Level 40, thanks.

What, are you surprised that my attacks aren't all hitting for 10k+ a tick? That's not how this game works.

honestresearcher

arri wrote: »

Level 40, thanks.

What, are you surprised that my attacks aren't all hitting for 10k+ a tick? That's not how this game works.

You must be one of the Max-MINNING group or something because thats just...i dont even know HOW you got it so low. And the 10k+ a tick...you clearly havent played this game enough yet.

Why should i rip into something so easy to take apart...

forrksakesexco

Um yeah arri god knows I'm not the best builder but there is something more than a little wrong with the numbers you have given us.

Oh yeah the topic
I'd go for getting shot of the cooldown...
I maybe wrong but I don't think there has been a review of the Munitions set for like ever man it still doesn't have it's own passive.
Lots of suggestions in the PTS Frameworks forum.
Don't think you were here for the Unarmed MA rework but they started a thread for it and gave the set what we thought it needed mostly.. Except for my Inspector Clouseau flying drop kick idea.
Hopefully there will be a proper pass of Munitions at some point and I would expect improvements to Rocket then.

xaogarrent

Rocket is terrible, but this is a stupid way to go about trying to prove it. For starters, you're definitely using synergies there, as to get those crit numbers you'd have to be using at least some basic ones. In other words: Crit is a basic synergy in and of itself, you get yourself a solid damage power, and some crit, maybe throw an offensive passive or toggle in there and bam, basic synergizing.

Secondly the best way to prove this sort of thing is to take the base values of damage, energy, recharge, etc, compare them to other base values, and then show they can can or can't be expanded upon. Since as of late buffing up powers has become fairly equal across the board, I'm just going to go over the basic attributes here:

Let's compare Rocket and Fireball. It's more a fair comparison than most people will attempt: Not all AoEs are really meant to be strictly AoEs, powers like Fireball and Rocket can also be looked at as Single Target spikes with AoE as a secondary function. Also, while Fireball isn't the most wowing power ever, it's still not too bad, either.

Rocket: http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Rocket

Fireball: http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Fireball

The first thing we notice is that their charge and activation time as well as damage is staggeringly similar. Rocket is cheaper energy wise, but not enough so to account for the fact it has a cooldown. Cooldowns are a funny thing: Even giving something a 1 second cooldown immediately reduces its value by a huge chunk because it instantly means you can't spam it. The practical result of this is that adding a cooldown at all should be where a significant portion of your cost mod comes from, and if cost modding scales linearly per second instead of being frontloaded most powers with 1-10 second cooldowns are going to be inherently underpowered.

Past the actual energy cost, there's one other point of notice about energy that jumps out at you: Rocket has the same energy cost regardless of charge time. This is bad, because if you decide to fire early in order to block an incoming attack, you waste energy, and put it on cooldown. You have to either fully charge the power, or cancel it by blocking.

However, another thing to note about the differences between these powers is that Fireball's range as well as AoE radius is half of Rocket's. On the flip side of that, both of these powers do reduced damage in AoE, which hurts the value of Rocket's increased radius size.

Looking over these pros and cons, you can draw this conclusion about Rocket: It suffers from being underwhelming due to a combination of both being an outdated power with bad stats, and being badly designed, due to having pros that are actively hampered by its cons. Thus, the easiest way to fix this power, would likely to be to remove one or two of its cons, specifically the ones that hamper its strengths the worst. Or, possibly, just to redesign the power from the ground up, because honestly it's clunky as hell in general.

beldin

I always liked to use imbued Rocketlauncher when doing Unity Missions with my munitions character, mostly killed
all the Henchmen and left the Villain with under half life. You can't also not compare it with FC or Gigabolt, since
most builds simply don't have such absurd high equilibrium.

And on my invuln characters Rocket did nearly the same damage to the main target than
Defile, and Defile is only single target.

ashensnow

How could one possibly get only 1k out of Ego Blade Breach ?

(assuming an appropriate passive and a toggle).

beldin

ashensnow wrote: »

How could one possibly get only 1k out of Ego Blade Breach ?

(assuming an appropriate passive and a toggle).

The lowest level you can get it, no items and no traits, and only tap it instead of charge? :biggrin:

xaogarrent

ashensnow wrote: »

How could one possibly get only 1k out of Ego Blade Breach ?

(assuming an appropriate passive and a toggle).

Defensive or Support Passive, Tank Role or Support Role, probably no toggle, likely self debuffing (i. e. LK and/or BCR), while taking your sample from a target with resistances.

Basically, you'd need enough self debuffing or enemy resistance to counter anything you're getting from items and stats, and practically no form of extra buffs.

ashensnow

xaogarrent wrote: »

Defensive or Support Passive, Tank Role or Support Role, probably no toggle, likely self debuffing (i. e. LK and/or BCR), while taking your sample from a target with resistances.

Basically, you'd need enough self debuffing or enemy resistance to counter anything you're getting from items and stats, and practically no form of extra buffs.

Exactly. Essentially purposefully gimping the power.

I'm not talking about min/maxing here. The baseline damage for a charged EBB at level 40 without any SS or gear at all, without any passive, without any toggle, literally just the power with nothing else, is greater than was described. This doesn't even take the resistance debuff into consideration.

xaogarrent

ashensnow wrote: »

Exactly. Essentially purposefully gimping the power.

I'm not talking about min/maxing here. The baseline damage for a charged EBB at level 40 without any SS or gear at all, without any passive, without any toggle, literally just the power with nothing else, is greater than was described. This doesn't even take the resistance debuff into consideration.

Now realize I've run into dozens of people who appear to be doing this, or at least things almost as bad, just since On Alert. It's not quite as bad as it has been at times in the past, but the number of level 40s I've run into who can't seem to break 500 DPS in an alert is staggering.

Hell, sometimes it's not even bad builds, I recently watched someone I KNOW has been playing for well over a year spam Defensive Combo the whole alert in a futile attempt to pull agro off one of my characters, being completely oblivious to the fact that had they thrown some Haymakers in there more regularly they'd do more damage AND hold agro better.

honestresearcher

beldin wrote: »

I always liked to use imbued Rocketlauncher when doing Unity Missions with my munitions character, mostly killed
all the Henchmen and left the Villain with under half life. You can't also not compare it with FC or Gigabolt, since
most builds simply don't have such absurd high equilibrium.

And on my invuln characters Rocket did nearly the same damage to the main target than
Defile, and Defile is only single target.

Defile has a AoE advantage that ends up doing a lot more than the Rocket Launchers side-damage. And including the De-buff on top of defile, that makes it better.

If Rocket Launcher is not intended to be a large attack, it should at least be on par with other powers similar to itself that arent Tier 1 Blasts....and they, like Defile all do more (and have more synergies, again defile reacts to Elemental debuffs, not just toxic debuffs)

Defile to me seems a good example of what Rocket Launcher should be looking to match IF it is not intended to be a hart hitting/high energy cost power.

theravenforce

arri wrote: »

There's a lot I can compare rocket launcher to that makes it seem good, too.

My Ego Blade Breach does at most 1k damage total. My Ebon Ruin does at most 1k damage total, fully charged (which, by the way, eats up your entire energy bar if you aren't SS endurance)

Shadow Embrace only does about 100-200 every .5 seconds, so while technically it's a stronger attack, in 3 seconds it only does 600-1200 damage.

Anything that can crit for more than 3k is absurdly powerful, it's just that people think that just because two or three abilities can do it, every ability has to be able to crit for 50k+ damage

Um...your values are horrifically low. Even my Mind AT in support role could crit for 4k with Ego Blast.

haleakala

honestresearcher wrote: »

It (without synergies) Crits for between 5500-6000k (total for both figures together) and does less than 1k to adjacent targets.

Let us compare this power to one of its rivals (figures taken without synergy, using the same Dex/ego/int based gear):

Force Cascade
Does 9600 Crit to ALL TARGETS caught

You name yourself honest researcher, yet you are not presenting your research very well. To begin, there is a power called Rocket in Munitions. There is also one called Shoulder Launcher in PA. It takes research for someone who doesn't use these powers to determine that you are in fact talking about Rocket, since Shoulder Launcher does not have a charge time. So, get the power's name right.

Further, "without synergy" means: power is not ranked up, no SS damage bonus, no ranged bonus from Ego, no toggle, no passive bonus, no on-next-hit, no role bonus, and etc. If you look at the tooltip damage numbers for rank 1 of the 2 powers in question on a level 40 with no synergies, they are:

Rocket: 152-522 fire and 152-522 crushing to primary; 61-209 fire and 61-209 crushing to targets w/in 20'. Charge: 2.33, animation .67. Energy: 88

Force Cascade: 327-1393 crushing to all in a 100' long 5' wide cylinder; Charge: 2.33, animation .67. Energy: 97-280.

Also, you talk about crits without presenting your crit severity bonus. Is it 50% (base), 85%, 90%, etc. Even if I assume 120% (which is pushing it), then your base for Cascade 9600 would be ~4360. With raw base damage of 1393, you would have to have some synergy to get to pre-crit of 4360.

Honest research requires the researcher to lay out all the variables in his comparisons so that others can evaluate his findings and conclusions. Failure to do so can artificially inflate the differences between the subjects of your comparisons.

Rocket's 522 * 2 is 1044 versus Cascade's 1393, not that big of a difference. Synergy application will of course magnify that difference, as will crit. The 522 doubled is also having target resistance applied to the two damage types separately, which further reduces the yield against any meaningful target. That's one factor that negatively impacts Rocket.

Another area where Rocket is inferior is that it has 2 damage types. Most passives will not boost both fire and crushing equally. Another check in Cascade's column.

Cascade's s energy cost was supposed to balance its high damage. In theory, people would either have to build for enough energy to fire it without an energy form active, or wait (essentially a cooldown) for the energy form to come back up. However, developments in the CO meta have reduced energy issues, making their use as a balancing factor questionable. Throw in the 6-second CD on Rocket (which ofc can be reduced) and it may be possible for someone to use a charged Cascade twice in the time they could use one Rocket. So, another factor in favor of Cascade.

Then there's size of area. Go figure, devs thinking that a 20' radius was bigger than a 5' cylinder. In practical play, however, a 40' diameter is ridiculous small in game area, and the cylinder hits everything in its path. I don't know about others, but I can usually get more targets in that 100' long 5' cylinder than I can a 40' diameter. Another factor for Cascade.

Yeah, Cascade is a better power. But, next time I'd recommend presenting the research yourself rather than relying on others to do so for you.

blkjackwilliams

A question on rocket.

Does the main target not get hit by the AoE portion of the attack?

theravenforce

blkjackwilliams wrote: »

A question on rocket.

Does the main target not get hit by the AoE portion of the attack?

I don't believe they do. I remember running Harmon Labs and it being used on someone infront of me and I got hit for 1k and they got hit for 500.. so I'm guessing nope.

lucyinspacewithdiamonds

Rocket Launcher sucks? Or you suck with it? Get the heck outta here. :P

You're doing it wrong.

mijjestic

lucyinspacewithdiamonds wrote: »

Rocket Launcher sucks? Or you suck with it? Get the heck outta here. :P

You're doing it wrong.

Like not using it in PvP? :biggrin:

lucyinspacewithdiamonds

Yes, Rocket Launcher is one of the most epic powers I've ever used.

cyrone

A good friend of mine hits 20k+ damage with Rocket Launcher. Don't see the problem with it.

beldin

haleakala wrote: »

Another area where Rocket is inferior is that it has 2 damage types. Most passives will not boost both fire and crushing equally. Another check in Cascade's column.

Yeah .. thats why its not so bad for me when i play with a defense passive. And i think the combined damage from fire and crushing was still around 10-11k with invulnerabilty on the main target on a crit.

Its however not something you can spam against Legendarys or Cosmics, but a nice Alpha-Strike when doing things like Unity or Nemesis Missions. A crit there for me simply is killing all Henchmen and bringing the Villain down to around 50%

That was btw. the only reason for what i liked to use the old imbue, and not to exploit anything

jasinblaze

just to point out cooldown isn't always a bad thing.
a build with hi INT/CD reduction and MSA might like the CD

lucyinspacewithdiamonds

Yeah I don't know why people care so much about the cooldown. I'd always be running around shooting things so three seconds was nothing to me.

stoopidme

honestresearcher wrote: »

Iv said it for a long time and still am quite omnipotent about it

Agree with most of what you said, this phrase is bugging me though. Are you sure that's an acceptable use of the word omnipotent?

cyrone

stoopidme wrote: »

Agree with most of what you said, this phrase is bugging me though. Are you sure that's an acceptable use of the word omnipotent?

Synonyms are powerful, mighty and supreme. So I think it's in proper context for the topic at hand. :biggrin:

cheesesloppy

Take Ego as a Super Stat

Take Rocket Launcher

Take Advantage

Use Rocket launcher, watch target go flying

Charge Sniper Rifle


At least that's what I'd do.

lucyinspacewithdiamonds

Well said.

You don't have to stand there and charge it all the way up any more than you have to do the entire maintain for Lightning Arc.

Nothing's more fun than knocking multiple targets at 100 feet away. Don't knock it until you try it. Pun intended.

ayonachan

Alright let me test out Cascade vs Rocket right now on some dummies...
My passive is AoPM(so that it will be fair to all powers)

704-2425 *2 is the damage and 49 is the energy cost for my rocket launcher.
1516-6466 is the damage and 54-155 is the energy cost for my cascade.
644-2748 *2 is the damage and 33-98 is the energy cost for my typhoon.
All of them have the same activation and charge time (.67 2.33)
Recharge time for my rocket launcher is 1.7 seconds.

I...honestly don't see a problem with it...

I mean, it (would but there is a tiny bug that I will get to later) does up to 4k base damage for 49 energy. Cascade does 6.5k for 155 energy (or have an energy form that it removes for lower energy cost).

I...don't see any problem whatsoever...

Oh wait...look at that......My fire damage doesn't use my defense penetration. Typhoon works properly but rocket launcher doesn't. Well time for me to write this down as another bugged power...

Edit: You know what..I'm gonna switch roles and passives and try to see the cap of force cascade with my pts gear!(But I'm not gonna change my SS so meh!)

Energy Cost: 27-78 (due to my energy form~)
Damage: 2046-8726

So the difference between AoPM+Hybrid and Kinetic Manipulation+(3-cap stacks of)Audacity+(ranged...damage..**** it)Avenger is 530-2260 damage.

*All cases have an eight-stacked concentration but Avenger has 29/15 and Hybrid has 29/14.

Edit2: After some minor tweaking I have scratched the 9.5k region. Using the 25% bonus from samurai set and slightly 'upping' my other damage buffs only gave an increase of 22 to my max damage.

Vigilante 2228-9503
Samurai 2234-9525

Ah...gotta love the old 766.989[3.2%]2147483647[21.882]95.9760

lucyinspacewithdiamonds

You don't need all the math to know if it'll work... just get about 250 ego and try it and you'll see.

haleakala

ayonachan wrote: »

I...honestly don't see a problem with it...

Yeah, nothing to see here, except: the OP claiming no synergy at all, which was not true; using crits, which magnify any differences, as the comparison point; and not revealing his severity, all of which exaggerate the differences.

@Lucy: some people like math.

ayonachan

Well the fire damage of rocket doesn't use my defense penetration. That is the only problem I can find but it might just be a pts thing...I'm not about to do live testings for it or anything...BUT here is a little more pts numbers.

1000-3444 *2 was for 'similar' power combinations (except kinetic manipulation has a 'bigger' bonus than targeting computer)

So 7k combined damage to a single target for 49 energy...except the fire damage doesn't use my defense penetration.....I have 69% of it yet it won't even bother to be anywhere near it...why couldn't you be like your brother, crushing?

Alright one more time

2228-9503 for 54-155 or 27-78 energy
1000-3444*2 for 49 energy
Charge and activation time is the same for both.

Which one would you pick?

I would pick my 1.2k+ maintain every .5 seconds over both...cause it costs a lot less and does more damage...and it is a starter power...Actual numbers for it is

1297(+30% for the advantage) for 8.4 + 6.5*X energy. and it comes with 10% piercing damage penetration!

Factor in even 50% critical severity for all those numbers if you want. I don't really want to touch the 'critical' subject. Hell I'll do it for you
14254.5 for 155 or 78 energy
5166 *2 for 49 energy
1945.5(+30% for the advantage) for 8.5+6.5*X energy (A 3 second maintain of crits while being point-blank would be 15174.9 for 41 energy)

Yes I made it 8.5 just to be even for the end result...you can minus my .1 from 41 energy if you like

kenpojujitsu3

arri wrote: »

My Ego Blade Breach does at most 1k damage total. My Ebon Ruin does at most 1k damage total, fully charged (which, by the way, eats up your entire energy bar if you aren't SS endurance)

I...am so sorry. That toon needs to eat a sandwich or something.

haleakala

ayonachan wrote: »

Well the fire damage of rocket doesn't use my defense penetration. That is the only problem I can find but it might just be a pts thing...I'm not about to do live testings for it or anything...BUT here is a little more pts numbers.

1000-3444 *2 was for 'similar' power combinations (except kinetic manipulation has a 'bigger' bonus than targeting computer)

So 7k combined damage to a single target for 49 energy...except the fire damage doesn't use my defense penetration.....I have 69% of it yet it won't even bother to be anywhere near it...why couldn't you be like your brother, crushing?

Alright one more time

2228-9503 for 54-155 or 27-78 energy
1000-3444*2 for 49 energy
Charge and activation time is the same for both.

Which one would you pick?

I would pick my 1.2k+ maintain every .5 seconds over both...cause it costs a lot less and does more damage...and it is a starter power...Actual numbers for it is

1297(+30% for the advantage) for 8.4 + 6.5*X energy. and it comes with 10% piercing damage penetration!

Factor in even 50% critical severity for all those numbers if you want. I don't really want to touch the 'critical' subject. Hell I'll do it for you
14254.5 for 155 or 78 energy
5166 *2 for 49 energy
1945.5(+30% for the advantage) for 8.5+6.5*X energy (A 3 second maintain of crits while being point-blank would be 15174.9 for 41 energy)

Yes I made it 8.5 just to be even for the end result...you can minus my .1 from 41 energy if you like

Yeah, there's no doubt Rocket is inferior to Cascade, even when you look at base numbers. And yes, maintains are better charge-ups with maybe a few exceptions. Thanks for the number work and explanations the honest researcher couldn't be bothered to provide.