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I am now going to tweak all powersets, set by set.
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
-DIRECTORY-
I did this previously and got yelled at for being bad at balancing. Now I'm still bad at balancing but now have an even more inflated ego and/or increased propensity for boredom. HERE WE GO.
ELECTRICITY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
FIRE
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
ICE
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
FORCE
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
Up next: WIND! And most of the other powersets.
- Elec/Fire/Force/Ice - Right here.
- Wind/Archery/Munitions/Gadgets - 6
- PA/Martial Arts - 15
- Telepathy/Telekinesis/Might - 17
- Heavy Weapons/Earth/Celestial/Darkness - 32
- Sorcery - 35
- Supernatural/Travel Powers - 36
- Ultimate Tweaks - 58
- Shared Toggles - 59
I did this previously and got yelled at for being bad at balancing. Now I'm still bad at balancing but now have an even more inflated ego and/or increased propensity for boredom. HERE WE GO.
ELECTRICITY
Powers Tweaked:
- Chain Lightning - Increase in damage. Chain Lightning can now continue off of defeated targets, much like ricochet throw.
- Electrocute - Can be tapped now. Taps only hold, while charges will apply negative ions, do the AoE effect, and also trigger the advantage condition. (We're going to be seeing this pattern a lot, just you wait.)
New Powers:
- Livewire - Creates a chain of lightning that can damage and reel targets inward. Hitting targets with this always applies Negative Ions, and will temporarily boost melee Energy damage.
- Stunning Touch - A taser-like attack that deals out a powerful stun to your target. Does much higher damage if the target is afflicted by Negative Ions.
- Magnetic Burst - Charged Melee! A powerful, point-blank burst of magnetic energy deals high electrical damage and knocks the target away. If afflicted by Negative Ions, they are consumed to deal out an even higher spike of damage.
- Lockdown - Creates a PBAoE maintained field of powerful electromagnetic energy. All enemies inside this field take a moderate amount of electrical damage, become weaker to energy damage, and become completely immune to knock. Intended to be stacked over Sparkstorm.
FIRE
Powers Tweaked:
- Fire Strike - Hits like a combo (three consecutive fire blasts, each getting stronger), on top of pre-existing damage buff.
- Fire Breath - gets emanation options. Renamed to Flame Spray.
- Rimefire Burst - Triggering the clinging flames/chill effect simply reduces the ability's recharge by 3/4ths instead of a full reset.
New Powers:
- Thermic Lance - Flings yourself forward in a corkscrewing lunge of flames. If done from over 20 feet away, this creates intense flames at your point of contact, which slow down enemies inside. Longer than average recharge.
- Advantage: Hotfoot - All lunges from this attack cause you to trail defense-sapping flames, much like a Firesnake. 3 Point Cost.
- Flamberge - Swings a blade of flames at your foe. Flamberge hits have a chance to apply Feed the Flames, which is a debuff that causes Clinging Flames to deal twice as much damage.
- Scorch - Conical melee maintain. Fires flames from your palms that can severely burn enemies up close, and apply Clinging Flames.
- Flame Bolt - Fires out an extreme-range bolt of fire (120 ft) that hits a single target. The move must be fully charged, but if done, it will do extreme damage to the target, and apply clinging flames 100% of the time.
- Advantage: Dying Flames - If the target is defeated in the next 10 seconds (or is flat out killed by the attack) they will erupt in a 15 ft. radius explosion of flame, damaging nearby enemies.
ICE
Powers Tweaked:
- Frost Breath - Renamed as Chilling Mist, and has emanation options.
- Shatter - Can hit 5 targets, and hits in a full sphere with a 30 foot range.
- Wall of Ice - Changed to a charged, wide cylinder AoE. The wall instantly propagates and will chill all targets in its path while doing damage. The advantage remains unchanged.
- Ice Barrier - Individual ice barriers are now completely damage-immune (to anything other than shatter.) Each barrier applies very high defense. Ice Barrier no longer roots you and has no energy cost, acting very much like an Active Defense.
- Ice Burst - Increased damage.
- Snow Storm - Advantage is changed: Instead of dealing damage based on enemy attacks, Snow Storm now reduces enemy defense against cold damage.
- Vapor Form - Completely changed. Vapor Form is now a PBAoE attack, not unlike Epidemic. Very low damage, but applies both chill and a snare effect very quickly. The new advantage, "cold feet", causes an ice patch to appear below you - enemies within 20 feet of this patch are snared, and risk getting knocked down if they remain on it, due to slipping. The only commonality this has to the old power is its name, and I'm sure everyone will hate me for changing it.
New Powers:
- Chilly Reception - The Ice energy return! Any time you chill an enemy, you gain 6 seconds of regenerating energy. This energy return scales best off of Rec, and can stack up to 2 times.
- Ice Slide Lunge - Ride forward on a sled of ice. The Ice Slide will accumulate in size the further it travels, increasing its final damage depending on distance. Lunges from 50 feet or further will chill the target.
- Ice Spike - A melee sweep upwards with cold air causes a big ice Stalagmite to erupt from the ground, knocking the target up. The Ice Spike remains as a structure, and if another is used in the same location, it will shatter for some extra spherical damage.
- Ice Breaker - Forms a gauntlet of ice over your fist, smashing the target for cold damage. If they're trapped in an Ice Cage, it immediately breaks and deals out high burst damage.
- Flash Freeze - Charged PBAoE, which causes spikes of ice to erupt around you, knocking targets. Full charges have a much higher chance to apply chill and trap targets in Ice Cages (instead of knock).
- Advantage: Icecap - Instead of pointing outwards, the ice spikes converge towards you, knocking all targets inwards.
FORCE
Powers Tweaked:
- Force Blast - Has much higher damage. Only full-charges knock.
- Personal Force Field - PFF Regenerates very quickly, in huge bursts once every 5 seconds. If you block for 5 seconds, all shield strength is restored. If the shield is depleted, PFF's regeneration is slowed. Blocking will counteract the depletion effect.
- Kinetic Manipulation - Damage bonus to physical attacks is no longer restricted to range only. KM also gains a small defensive bonus to all damage types, similar to Telekinetic Form. Finally, KM grants a major damage bonus to Force Cascade, but can still be used up by FC. (not instantly, though. See below)
- Protection Field - Advantage is replaced with "Refractive Field", which will place the target in stealth if they are shielded while below 33% health. The effect only occurs once every 15 seconds per target.
- Force Snap - Has a 120 foot range.
- Force Eruption - Has a 2x length charge. Charging increases its damage exponentially, and full charges get a 20 foot radius instead of 10. However, this also places a recharge period on the move. Grav. Polarity can activate on a half-charge now.
- Containment Field - Tap is a standard hold. Charge applies the same 50% damage reduction, but now acts as a hard stun with very long duration. Damage has absolutely no standing on duration of hold. This is THE hold you use if you want to take an enemy out of the fight temporarily. Charge is interrupted by damage, however.
- Redirected Force - Much stronger defense (doubled). Hackneyed damage buff is removed, and instead an advantage called "Feedback Loop". The way this advantage works is that the damage buff is stacked with each successful hit, and each stack is used up one by one per successive charge attack or maintain tick. Each stack lasts 15 seconds.
- Crushing Wave - 2x damage. No longer can push enemies out of range.
- Force Detonation - Slightly higher damage. Gains a new advantage: 'Gravity Rift'. All enemies hit by the Force Detonation have their fall speed reduced.
- Forces Cascade - Containment Blast cancels out the knock caused by this move. The containment fields here work the same as the power, complete with the hard stun.
Instead of removing all energy forms, repeated use of FC imposes different stages of the "Energy Drain" debuff, which stacks as it's used repeatedly. Each stack has a specific effect that will cancel out certain energy forms:- 1 stack: Any circle of arcane power you're standing in is consumed. Energy refraction shield is consumed.
- 2 stack: Active offense powers are consumed.
- 5 stack: Energy form passives are canceled out temporarily.
- Under no circumstances should this do anything to forcefields.
- Inertial Dampening Field - Can now stack, whenever a nearby enemy or you takes damage. Its stacking effect is that your IDF becomes slightly stronger, and your shield strength also rises.
New Powers:
- Kinetic Absorption - You absorb kinetic energy. Enemies who get knocked by your attacks, and any damage you take, will generate a burst of energy. This is scaled off of your END stat, and occurs once every 2 seconds.
- Field Push - Smacks targets in front of you down using a burst of energy from a forcefield.
- Advantage: Force Feedback - Each hit grants you a bit of extra, temporary shielding. However, this also increases the energy cost of Field Bash for each consecutive hit, similar to Particle Accelerator.
- Supercollider - A cylindrical burst of force energy will drive targets in a line backwards.
- Advantage: Conservation - will causes all melee damage you do for 10 seconds after this move to be 10% higher, when full charged.
- Shield Breaker - Concentrates your force powers into a singular point, creating a piercing force that penetrates most defenses. By default, Shield Breaker will temporarily disable blocking (without any sort of Crippling Challenge). It also shatters any Containment Fields that you might have used on a foe, resulting in extra damage.
- Singularity - Summons a temporary pet. This pet travels slowly, and will continuously knock enemies within 20 feet of it inwards while doing crushing damage. Singularity can be 'shattered' by Force Cascade or Force Detonation, increasing the damage of these respective powers as it explodes.
- Force Crush - Maintained single-target attack. Force Crush imposes a rapidly contracting field of force on your opponent, imploding them over time. This snares the target, while doing extreme crushing damage.
- Advantage: Compound Fracture - Each tick of this maintain has a chance to debuff the target's defense against Crushing damage, but this also increases Force Crush's energy cost.
Up next: WIND! And most of the other powersets.
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Post edited by bluhman on
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Comments
Quite ambitious changes and additions- sadly prob too much so for this game.
I prob wouldn't add anymore 120ft range stuff. The ones we have already highlight glaring AI range issues. Maybe if the AI were better compensated and the 120ft powers changed a bit, but I'd rather not make things even more abusable. Also, Scorch seems a but redundant w/ all the AoE Fire already has.
To me, Ice also already has enough AoE, so I'd prob just make Shatter the bonafide EU for Chill effects and rename it. 'Shattering' as an effect can be added on w/ new or existing powers, as you highlighted. Also, if ur changing Ice Barrier to be like an AD, mine as well just make it classed as one and give comparable benefits.
Ricochet Throw chains are based on charge atm, so I'm not quite sure what the CL changes entail. Would one still be able to chain it when charged as normal? It could actually be a nerf to disable that part of it. Thunderstrike already applies NI on tap and is also on a cd; so I'm not sure Electrocute needs to be more like it.
you seem to like knocks thus far :x I do like powers ala force blast not being a forced knock, though.
I would be against making KM boost FC in particular, just cause to me a passive shouldn't single-out powers like that. KM is very buggy w/ its energy form cancel when using FC, though - it may just be an Impulse thing, but doing certain attacks or even end building can refresh the duration of the EF cancel... which really, really sucks. The Containment Field changes could be a bit too much- maybe make its cast interrupted by damage or behave a bit diff in pvp. As for Crushing Wave, they need to add at least one other tick (or just change the tick to the usual 0.5sec) so it can work w/ Concentration properly. Its base dps is actually not much better or worse than most 45d 50ft cones atm.
Despite my nitpicks, there's some good stuff in there overall. Obv can't agree w/ all of it, but making the game more dynamic and re-looking at the weaker powers is always welcome in my book.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
The Ice Barrier to a full-out AD might just as well have been said. Still, it carries a few implicit disadvantages - like your defensive benefits not moving with you.
Thing about Ricochet Throw is that it will continue off of dead targets. Something Chain Lighting doesn't do. Not sure why they never changed that, because being able to do that would make it waaaay more useful.
To be specific, I really like vertical knocks. To be honest, quite a few of the new powers suggested are actually meant to be melee ranged. Should've probably clarified that blah. Scorch, in particular, is meant to be a melee cone. They're copy-pasted from earlier mini-set suggestions I made, and a lot of them are intended as like final burst attacks, sort of like Rimefire.
Containment Field being a bit less superpowerful might be a valid tweak. I'll add that in - interruptible charge via damage, and if interrupted, just a standard hold. The thing about Crushing Wave is that it's already Tier 2 - so it really should deserve to be stronger than the other 'breath' attacks. Adding a tick to the end, I was considering that, because I am well-familiar with the whole difficulty stacking issue. Just thought it would be less bad if you're able to chase down your enemies while using it.
Oh, I see what ya mean. Yea that'd help a good deal.
Yea, that makes more sense then. Its an interesting idea- adding a few melee/Str scaling options to some of the ranged trees. Mine as well, as long as their balanced w/ the others its just more variety for building. Have to be careful though, as any melee-scaling ranged powers lack one of the biggest intended drawbacks to melee (reach).
Yeah they can still up CW's damage a bit, for me not as much due to it being one higher tier than normal, but also due to the self-root. Most other cones (save skarn's, but that one is actually good dps) have no lockdown on 'em.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
The way I designed it there was so that it would be functionally identical if charged less than halfway, as it is now. I just added the extras in because it's supposed to be a freakin' explosion of force. It's a bit odd that a literal explosion is somehow weaker than - a storm, emitting gasses, and dancing around gracefully with dual-pistols.
FD getting an implosion advantage would be cool, but I think the singularity pet already covered that base.
(crap, I completely forgot about adding in the implosion single-target attack to that Force post. Oh well, maybe later.)
WIND
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
MUNITIONS
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
ARCHERY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
GADGETEERING
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers
yes i know i said previously i wouldnt add anything deal with it
Clear Flask/0-20% charge - Potassium Bomb- Explodes in damage on the enemy, dealing crushing and toxic damage. OR: Ether- Will remove all debuffs and holds on the allies hit.
Blue Flask/20-40% charge - Ultra Soap- Primary target trapped in a bubble hold. Puddle appears beneath the target, and any enemies who get nearby risk slipping. OR: Healing Potable- Provides a strong boost of healing.
Green Flask/40-60% charge - Mutagen- All targets hit begin rapidly taking toxic damage over time, and lose defense. OR: Controlled Mutagen- Ally's stats are boosted substantially.
Red Flask/60-80% charge- Instant Monster- A horrifying red gelatinous sentient goop emerges and begins trying to dissolve any enemies it can get its hands on. Instant monster has very high defense and threat, and does pretty good damage, but suffers from its very low speed. OR: Pheremone- Ally gains 3 stacks of enrage (regardless of toggle), moves faster, and becomes immune to holds.
Black Flask/80-100% charge- Tar trap- Enemies hit get ensnared and/or held within an explosion of tar. The tar's strength is very high, making it quite difficult to break out. OR: Escape Plan- All allies hit gain a substantial boost to speed and defense. If the primary target hit is not in tank role, they will drop most of their aggro.
I don't agree with KM giving FC 4x Damage but still disappearing. FC already does massive damage but it's very expensive without an energy form, I'd rather that only the cost discount gets disabled instead of the entire power.
I definitely agree that all of the breath powers should be changed to have emination points.
That Dork In The Suspenders, signing out.
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I mean putting all the changes for all the power sets into a single extended post, thereby making it too big of a pain in the butt to actually respond to.
This brings me back though...
My only suggestion: People stop responding until he's done posting all his ideas. Devs are the ones who need to read this; breaking up all his hard work by rushing in to give opinions might hurt that.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
No matter how good the intentions are, I don't think they'd take too kindly to being told how to do their jobs.
I've stopped trying mull over my own balancing suggestions, even if it was a good exercise for me to understand more how the powers fare on the whole. There's just no real point coming at it from that angle for the devs.
Selphea's right in that its not our jobs to ultimately worry about, but discussion should happen anyways imo- more than ideas can come from these threads. My understanding is that in the past the devs have lifted ideas and concepts directly from players (still do, apparently), but it would be ultimately foolish to assume they'd heed most of them. I think posters like Bluhman are aware of that by now. When they take suggestions, its pretty much cause they've asked for them.
Pointing out problems is why I'd more likely use the Bug report forums these days, but that's also not proving very effective either. Compiled bug lists even on their own testing forums aren't getting any/many results; if its not related to PTS bugs from new things then its likely to get ignored.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
For example with Chain Lightning, i'm like "okay, why does it need to bounce off defeated targets?" because I don't really understand what the root problem is with chains not bouncing off defeated targets, so it's hard to critique whether it's a good solution.
And yes, a bug report I submitted 2 years ago still hasn't been fixed :O!
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You know, with our collective minds, you and I could very well add twice as many powers to the game as it has now.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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The old version of the thread I was doing that was similar to this - prefaced each tweak with a blurb about what was right and wrong with the set. The thing about this, though, is that I'm just methodically going through each set, without any real standing about how the set, altogether, needs tweaks to be better. It's much more on a power-to-power basis than anything.
And especially in some cases, like with fire and lightning, the preface would basically be something like "well, there's nothing really wrong or missing from the set, but I think it would be nice if I could x". Here, I'm just implicitly stating stuff like "Chain Lightning sucks, because other power y does the job better, not to mention its damage is terrible."
Other sets, though, definitely have their issues. Like force. But at the same time I'm pretty sure that the reasons that force/ice/whatever sucks as a whole have been told to them hundreds of times over the years, so on the complete flipside of that, I'm sort of trusting/respecting that devs or readers have good background with the set to know what's going on.
Thing about PFF (and all the other defense passives) is that each should really have a unique application and style to it. Even subtle things like how Invuln VS. Defiance encourages stopping rapidfire attacks versus big bursts. This is important to remember to avoid stuff like PFF basically becoming Regen, but with more health and less healing potential. The mood I was going for the PFF passive change was actually sort of a traditional FPS/Halo/Borderlands-like shield, where you alternate between attack and defend stages. More mechanics centric, PFF is super well suited to a short alpha strike versus constant sustained damage - which effectively makes it a mirror to how Regen works out.
The thing about KM and FC is that, on one hand, there is pretty much no reason to use KM over the other passives that boost physical damage at range, precisely because of the energy form issue. And on the other hand, KM is supposed to be an energy form. And literally the only thing that energy forms apply to is FC (and skarn's bane, but we'll be damned if we run into any enemies that use the full power version against us!). All things considered, because FC cancels out all power forms, the issue might actually have more to do with FC than with KM. Might look into that when I get back to Force.
Changed that. For those who want to use shotgun for damage, I retooled it into an auto-shotty advantage.
POWER ARMOR
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers not done because it's another one of those sets that already has more than enough options.
DUAL BLADE
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
SINGLE BLADE
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
FIGHTING CLAWS
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
UNARMED
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers
OTHER MA STUFF
Powers Tweaked:
More powers are ALWAYS welcomed :biggrin:
and some powers need more LOVE (like the Mini Mines)
Loving the Elemental Melee and Lunges Ideas
I recently learned that the current incarnation of Minimines is actually a complete accident. It used to be a Crushing/Fire type attack, but somewhere along the line of debuffs, the Crushing aspect was just entirely dropped and never compensated. This was after Minimines also got a previous damage debuff, and I think also an energy-up. Keep in mind, most of this I learned from people who've played the game longer than me.
Not sure what's wrong with the Night Warrior change... Thing about it, I kind of hold the opinion that Shadow Strike shouldn't have existed - on top of doing way too much damage, it thematically doesn't fit all characters (like I say, not all characters stab people with their fists). On the flipside, this change makes it so that you can sneak-attack with whatever cool precision strike you want (Dragon's Bite? Focused Shot? Sniper Rifle?), AND the end damage output most likely will be a bit lower (i.e. more balanced).
I've tweaked around some stuff in Force and Gadgeteering, after I realized Force probably could use a more loving single-target attack, and gadgets definitely need some more reliable healing capabilities.
Up next - MENTALIST POWERSoh god I've been dreading this part.
TELEPATHY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
- Ranged (default) - Alter-Egos fire ego blasts at their targets, and can charge up a telekinetic wave. Their attacks sometimes remove hold resistance.
- Melee - Alter-egos charge in with Ego Blades. They draw higher than usual aggro in this state.
- Support - Alter-Egos will use empathic healing on any targets they see that are injured.
They have very low health, but their summon is a click. Their health can be directly raised by having a higher Ego stat.TELEKINESIS
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
MIGHT
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
Are you also suggesting lowering its duration to 15 seconds? If not this could make things a bit too much. Without the barriers being destroyed by aoe, they can be kept up 100% of the time quite easily.
I do want snow storm to be changed, but if it gets a resistance debuff, firesnake will need to be changed to only do a fire resistance debuff.
You'll have to excuse me. As my only experience with Ice Barrier was a short test in the powerhouse, I failed to notice that its duration was longer than 15 seconds. That said, I wouldn't consider it. Even if it had the same tier of efficiency as an active defense, alongside its recharge, it'd still be a grade below the other ADs due to having to stay still to use it effectively.
I hadn't considered the implications of stacking resistance debuffs/firesnake's issues. I can't imagine Infernals would be happy with the change, though, and FS is one of the few powers that ties the three elemental sets together. We'll see what I come up with when I get to infernal!
Right....
Mind Break - **** Yes. I complained about this for a long time and pretty much hate other mind break users who destroy debuffs in boss fights before the correct time.
Empathic Healing - Again, yes. A very nice change, however the starting value shouldn't be increased too much since it does ramp up quite a bit over time. I'd honestly suggest having the ramp up of healing effect increased instead of starting value though.
Shadow of Doubt - All the New Telepathy DoTs USED to be able to interrupt (with the exception of Mental Storm, that was once a stun power). They went through free interrupts to interrupt lockout to ...what we have now. The reason why it was changed, much to my displeasure (but it was necessary) was that mobs aren't able to deal with this form of crowd control, so some players influenced Devs to get rid of it entirely.
I would disagree with making SoD an interrupt. Because it brings up the same issue that we had a while back, which was that in 5-10 man instances there could be 10 players with SoD and if they time it right would lockdown a Legendary or something with these powers.
However, if after a successful interrupt (successful interrupt = interrupting a charge attack or an attack) it placed a 10 second interrupt lockout on the target so they could not be interrupted that would be better. But it is still a tricky area to go into.
Ego Sleep - No thank you. This power has already fallen from the top spot of control powers and is now on par with charged paralyzes. I would welcome an advantage which allowed for 5 ticks of damage to not break sleep on targets. However I suspect such a modification would mean that Hold HP would have to be revived in some fashion. Or have some sort of flag on in coming dmg on these targets. (Advantage would be: Deep Sleep or REM :P)
Summon Nightmare - The fun thing about this power is it's advantage, since you can generate your own army of psychokinetic minions this way. So I'd leave that power alone.
Mind Lock - Yes. Been preaching about how confuses should focus enemy attack on other enemies for ages. Befuddling Rage I think is fine and would be great IF confusion worked like this.
Psychic Vortex + Collective Will = Me gusta.
Master of The Mind - Personally I felt this power suffered the most at the hand of naysayers to New Telepathy. Simply because it was incredibly useful and powerful. If it were up to me to change the power, I'd grant it's heightened HP and dmg resistance back. Constant healing that it had was nice but a lil crazy.
My Characters on PRIMUS
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I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
I do like the sound of this ability. Questions which arise though...are...effects on higher level targets.
For the purposes of classification and Manipulator defense breaching, would this be classed as a CC effect?
If so, then what/how will it affect Legendaries/Cosmics? Will it be allowed to stack?
I'd imagine that it would simply reduce their max HP perhaps? Would be capped at...4-5 perhaps? Depends on the severity of the reduction on higher level targets however.
You have no idea how much I like this idea. I suggested something similar a while back. I'd definitely love to see this as an ability.
Psionic Echoes are nice but this would be pretty damn cool. However, I'd call them Astral Echoes perhaps instead of Alter-Egos.
Ranged - EGO
Melee - ID
Support - SUPER EGO
As their role names, ah Freud
I'd rather much see, TK (Power) formulate TK constructs of varying shape and size and hurl them at enemies or better yet, allow us to knock enemies into one another or toss them around.
Yes.
Not sure if this is necessary...last time I checked the defense percentage was 16%. Maybe increase the duration of the TK Reinforcement?
However having said that...16% isn't that much...
I like this change, sometimes it can be tricky to keep energy up when Ego Leech decides to be annoying.
Ego Hold has no tap version, it's a full charged paralyze. It would be a lot better if it was paralyze on tap though.
Charged Version should grant 2 stacks of Ego Leech OR incorporate the Mass Effect advantage it has.
I'd support NM scaling with REC or EGO to be honest.
How about a debuff to all incoming Ego Damage instead?
Erm...that sounds more telepathic than telekinetic. The animation and damage of this attack IS throwing bits of environment at foes. I don't see how that would placate them instead of stunning them. I'd perhaps put something like this in instead:
TK Maelstrom - New Advantage - Psychokinetic Barrier - You can utilize the psychic energy of your stunned foes to generate a psychokinetic barrier which increases in strength as you gain more stacks of Ego Leech. Lasts 10 seconds. You must full charge this ability to gain a barrier. The duration of the stun on your targets is cut in half.
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
__________________________
Thanks for that feedback! Glad you like most of it.
SoD was chosen as the interrupt here, since it's the closest of all the TP DoTs to a single-target attack. (or maybe I'm getting it mixed up. Blah). As for how its interrupt works, you're correct in assuming that any given enemy can and should only be interruptible once every 10 seconds. Why am I inspired to do that? Ice Cage. Its advantage is the only interrupt that works correctly, and it's just so great for stopping your enemy from doing an attack. It always works whenever you need it to, but of course, only when it's ready.
On Ego Sleep, that coincides mostly with every other charge hold being stronger now. All of them are slowly being converted over to having options for partial charges, so just having a bit more leniency on how much beating a target can take before waking up makes it a bit more comparable to the other charge holds - which, while single target, are more robust. Ego Sleep is weaker, and AoE.
Summon Nightmare and Master of the Mind are both powers that I don't have a great deal of experience with. Same goes for Mind Vortex, but apparently I did good on that!
I was inspired to tweak SN around, since my very little past experience with it wasn't too great. I was imagining it having the same issue that Collective Will has when summoning extra guys, and then having them just poof after a henchmen dies. Not a fun experience, so changed it around. Just seems more practical to me to have an option to bind it to yourself instead of an enemy for more reliability, and, if you want to still have the option to summon hordes of nightmares, don't take the advantage! That's really what most advantages should come down to - important tactical decisions you should weigh the pros and cons to in order to see if you want to take it.
Again, not too much experience with SN, so maybe I'll tweak it so that the default power can summon multiple nightmares.
My only experience with Master of the Mind was attempting to test the power out in the PH, only to discover my character didn't even have enough energy maximum to use it - and they're rec. Just dumb, I say. The other feedback I've heard on it wasn't too good, but anyways. While improved HP would give the user more of a fighting chance, I feel it doesn't get to one of the issues the power has (if it even lacks the following option...) - Can't cancel out of it; if you use it at the wrong moment, you're dead. All the HP in the world won't fix the fact you can't block or move super quickly.
In turn, a maintained summon (while maybe not as cool as personally controlling a mind golem) is still a kind of interesting gimmick, would ideally still be dealing out massive Ego damage, and most importantly, quickly allow the user to stop using it in case they are being threatened. I dunno. It's possibly something better suited to a Sorcery tree than TP. Maybe all it needs is a cancel button (and a lower energy cost.)
Should probably clarify, the percent health reduction's based on the target's current health. Using it on a high-rank target while they're near full-health is going to look impressive, that's for sure, but that health's very quickly going to come back, or at best, probably be whittled down to the same level by the time the effect wears off. Its main application is in making finishing off targets - weak or strong - that much easier.
Imagining stacking, I'd have to say no. Much like identical-rank AoPMs, it does not stack. That's probably for the best to prevent teams of 9 illusion-wound users teaming up with one sniper and instantly downing Gravitar. Keep in mind, if they were all fully ranked (and we just assume temporarily that there's no scaling), those 9 wound inflictors would reduce their target to 1% health instantly. Yeah.
I never even noticed how well those three roles could map to freudian concepts. I'll have to remember that!
I was considering the usage of knocking enemies into other enemies, but thought it might be too much of a technological stretch. Yes, that's where I draw the line on what apparently the devs can and cannot do, because I'm very smrt.
The advantage on TK shield's necessary, I believe, since Force Sheath on Force Shield offers practically the same defense that TK shield does, but with added energy. It's similar to the case between Sniper Rifle and Focus Shot.
On Ego hold. Remember - all charge holds getting retweaked.
On Ego Surge - Scaling with ego's too obvious I think. It's also recursive, and if not careful, will basically offer unreasonable crit buffs. Not to mention Ego already has a bit up its sleeve to boost crit chance. On the flipside, Rec is a stat that the Disciple uses, and also doesn't have many perks to its name in terms of other powers or specs, so this sort of throws a bone to that stat.
TK-Wave. Functionally, I wanted something similar to what the advantage is purposedly supposed to do - just that it works on enemies. As it is, there's already a ton of ego-defense-down effects out there, many of which are already ingame!
I'll admit that the Amnesia effect was a concept I had leftover from my writeups on TP. I didn't include it there, though, since I felt that that'd be bloating the mentalist category with too many PBAoEs. Oh well; could be hitting them on the head really really hard to forget things? That advantage you suggested is pretty tempting, though. Maybe a bit similar to what TK Eruption/Energy Wave+Adv does.
How much higher? I do like the idea of full charges applying knock however.
Define huge bursts.
PFF needs to have it's shield regeneration per 3 sec fixed and should have some form of innate damage resistance/modification to shield layer.
Once the shield regen is fixed and we get damage modification to shield layer there should be some tests run to see if it is on par with other defensive passives. If not then halve current regeneration rate or reduce the shield regeneration rate per 3 sec by 1 second.
PFF's regeneration is already slowed when shield is depleted. I'm not a fan of having to rely on blocking to regain my passive currently let alone for five seconds.
I like this idea.
Not sure why, but this did make me laugh. I'd suggest a reduction on that range, purely because The Unleashed AT shouldn't be able to get targets outside of a normal lunge range of other melee ATs.
Hmm, interesting change.
My problem with Containment Field is the 50% dmg reduction. It makes very little sense. But with this suggestion I can see why its there. I like it.
I would though, add in an advantage which turns the power into an AoE hold which holds foes within 20ft of the main target. Must be fully charged.
This. This is what it should have been. Thank you. I'd also get rid of the multiple bubbles effect and have it as an AoE Force Field linked to your character which is moveable like Gravitar and her targeting reticule hold attack dome thing. :P
Again. YES.
Hmm. Two things:
- This would be incredibly hilarious under the effects of Time Manipulation in Aftershock.
- Force Detonation's damage doesn't at present or with this suggestion (I'd imagine) warrant such a lengthy CD as it has. I'd probably go with a 1-2 sec CD or hell, keep the damage the same and loose the cool down.
- If FD did loose CD...perhaps it could be changed into a repel with a crushing damage debuff applied to all hit targets?
Hmm. My issue here is that Containment Fields in CO are so strange and backward. If it were me, I'd replace that Containment Blast Advantage with:
Force Cascade: Kinetic Compression Fields - Force Fields which encapsulate your targets in damaging fields of crushing energy over time. That way even though they may be out of your range they'll be taking damage all the while.
Having said that I do like the stack mechanic you've suggested.
Lil bit iffy on this suggestion. IDF IMO needs to have better scaling to start with. It should scale with EGO or END (Or maybe for increase of variety of users PSS).
I have suggested in the past that it act like an actual form power and grant more absorb per stack and half of that percentage as a damage increase (like normal forms).
Increasing shield strength will do nothing but make it like a Compassion Form. And even then PFF doesn't truly benefit from Compassion since it does nothing to the shield regeneration per three sec so...not necessary IMO.
I'm glad someone else mentioned these sorts of powers. I've been wanting similar things. Although my idea for the energy unlock was:
Kinetic Reverberation - Scales on EGO/STR - You can three ticks of energy whenever you knock or attempt to knock a target.
Hrm...that advantage...I'd make it "Causes all Force damage you do for 10 seconds after this move to be 10% higher when fully charged". More friendly that way. Of course this could be extended to Crushing but...melee has Demolish for that.
Oohhhhhhh. Dis powah. Seems very naughty. I think Shield Breaker blasting through blocks by default will simply become an overused power with something like 2GM or whatever. I'd leave block breaking to Crippling Challenge personally.
This sounds like a ranged DW lol. I do like the sound of it but I'd tweak it...perhaps make it a charge power which damage interrupts.
Cyrone actually suggested a force power called Singularity...and it got put on Vehicles :P.
Having said that, this idea looks fancy. It seems lately that the powers we have been getting like detonation, I'd definitely like to see this power.
OMG. Wait. This is like my Kinetic Shell suggestion and I love it!
However. Add in an advantage which makes this a maintained AoE attack.
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I see. Well this could work quite well (just make sure the lockout is NOT susceptible to Celestial Cleansing lol). It also fits I think:
Gravitar: Ha! You can't handle me!
Player: *uses Shadow of Doubt*
Gravitar: *gasps* What if...What if they CAN handle me?! :eek:
I see where you're coming from with this. This may explain why I can no longer use Ego Sleep by itself to make SV's nod off mid combat.
I do maintain though that some sort of revival of Hold HP would have to be carried out for this to work. Either that or they change Ego Sleep into Ego Stun lol.
With regard to SN allowing you to summon multiple copies...I was referring to Rank 2 + Night Terror advantage, which makes ALL the fun possible.
Night Terror advantage is mainly why I would be against changing Summon Nightmare, simply because of what you can do with this advantage.
But I can see why you suggested it and if you changed the default power to your suggestion that would rock.
MoTM used to allow for the following when activated in addition to what it does now:
SOME players hated the idea of a powerful ultimate-esque power for Telepathy so after the 10 month wait it was nerfed into the ground.
Whilst it was great by itself it could be used with Active Defensives. And on that point alone I reckon it was nerfed. Instead of the easy option of cancelling out all activations of AO's, AD's, Forms or HoTs or buffs upon activation of MoTM.
But the stupidly high energy cost, pitiful duration and CD was always an issue and likely was the case since some of the new telepathy powers which never made it out worked with END/PRE/INT.
I think the only thing I currently love about MoTM is the wonderful Astral Armor/Psychokinetic FX it has going for it. That's it.
Most of New Telepathy (if not all) was rushed out of PTS and in fact was SO buggy that powers didn't even rank up properly, Mental Leech healed foes in combat and all sorts of nonsense. And ofc, I complained until it was partially fixed. (We still don't have New Telepathy working with TP Reverb...)
A maintained summon...hrm. I'd perhaps make that as another power entirely. Like some form of Psionic Inundation which summons an aggressive psychic energy field to attack foes around you.
I see, I think things like Illusionary powers should/would be a cool mini set for the Mentalist Tree. Or maybe just an addition to Telepathy. Either would work. (Wanted to say that Crowd Control in CO is the ultimate illusionary set...but I refrained...sort of xD)
Good good!
Psychology for the win!
Ah, yeah. To be honest I was surprised when I saw time slowing effects in Aftershock...then learned how difficult and dangerous that was to pull off lol.
Mhmm, I understand. Yeah. REC PSS with DEX + this Nimble Mind would be a very very interesting crit build lol.
True. I was slightly reluctant to offer yet another ego defense reduction debuff but I tried it lol. In this case, it'd have to be a good percentage but not so good it cripples targets alongside SoD's 15% from Malaise.
It's entirely possible. I at first was going to suggest some form of powerful rooting effect or some weird effect which stuck enemies to the ground with the impact of the attack...
I guess that'd be sort of similar to Verte-break advantage on Dragon Claws...having targets knocked down over time.
Or maybe introducing a new form of knock which increases the 'recovery' time of foes as they remain on the ground longer lol.
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Might I suggest one of two things:
Also, I'd like to point out that Lightwave Slash is the only 120° melee attack in it's set, and unlike it's equivalent powers in other sets: Roomsweeper, Cleave, Onslaught, Iron Lariat, Inexorable Tides, Scything Blade, Blade Tempest, Ego Blade Frenzy, Frenzy, and Vicious Cyclone it does not have access to Challenging Strikes. In addition to your changes, I believe it should have access to that advantage.
And, while I certainly understand that has enough powers at the moment that other sets should get new ones before more are considered for it, I feel that the Laser Sword mini-set is sufficiently different from the rest of PA to deserve it's own passive.
Quantum Stabilizer
Requires 1 power from Powered Armor or 2 non-energy-building powers from any framework.
Slotted Passive
I'd also like to suggest an Energy Unlock for it, but frankly I'm not sure how I'd want it to work.
That Dork In The Suspenders, signing out.
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Crushing Wave's problem, simple enough, could probably be solved by just adding an extra tick to the end. That still means that it applies Concentration slower than most other cone attacks, but at the very least, the damage boost means it's one of the strongest available now, and it costs a little less energy to use. The issue of having to hit with all ticks is abated by not pushing targets out of its own range.
Haven't been paying too much attention to the global advantages (CC, CS, Accelerated Metabolism), due to not really having a great reference as to what powers have it and which don't. I completely agree with you, though.
The scary thing about Laser Blade - Even when you're using it with a passive like WotW/Quarry/whatever, it still does enough damage on its own to regularly grab aggro off of everyone else. The lack of passive sort of plays into its balance at the moment, I feel: Disastrously strong, can stack/rupture, good on both consistent and burst damage, but has no native passive and requires a bunch of energy to use. I think a lack of its own energy unlock also plays into that a bit.
The passive's pretty good, but I find the efficiency improvement for all tech powers a bit befuddling considering the damage bonus it offers. I would swap it out for the aforementioned energy unlock, whatever it ends up being.
Force Blasts - One lesson I've learned when making these sorts of suggestions is to never be 100% specific, for two reasons: One is to stop people calling balance bull**** on your suggestions, stating something like "I can do a 487530 damage Force Cascade tap with this buff, it further breaks the already broken game." Well, I can't account for your ability to break the game since I am not the god of gearing and farming for super gear. I just make builds and costumes, man.
The other main reason is to give whoever decides to actually implement the powers some freedom of interpretation to decide how much more/less it needs. Though, the track record doesn't entirely point to Cryptic being particularly good at this either.
But for specifics, Force Blast should be treating its knock as more a liability than a bonus. Maybe do damage about on par with Gust.
PFF - Huge bursts = regenerating like upwards of 50% of your shield, but only once every 5 seconds (aka a long time). It's 'quick' regeneration, but it's not constant regeneration. Hence why it theoretically ends up doing very well against large burst damage from stuff like a single Force Cascade from Draconis, but would fall to pieces if being attacked by a VIPER squad leader and 12 soldiers... Actually, speaking of VIPER, assume I also said something about PFF becoming resilient to pulson weapons. That weakness is arbitrary and stupid. Much like how PFF's partially disabled by Energy Storm.
Force Snap - Gotta admit, wasn't thinking about The Unleashed while tweaking that power. I was thinking more of Impulses/default force chars, who frequently use 100ft knocking powers that can easily get an enemy out of its own range. In that scenario, Snap's used to snipe that target back into their own reach.
On the other hand, let's not forget that Snap's success rate is way worse than any lunge, and probably can only be raised via Ego. Also, how in practice, that tweak probably won't be enough to get an enemy knocked ALL the way into melee range.
Redirected Force - Yeah, I completely agree that its graphic should've been a huge force bubble dome instead of Force Nimbus' ******** brother. Note the way that its advantage works as well: Longer duration, but used up by bursts. Makes it better suited to Force's charge/tap heavy execution, versus its current incarnation, which ironically works best with a very low-energy physical damage maintain. Like SMG burst.
Force Detonation - Honestly didn't remember how long its recharge was. It's like, what, 10-15 seconds? I agree it could warrant some cooldown reduction, though. But at the same time I sort of feel that doesn't get to the heart of its biggest flaw, which is also core to its nature: Making a hugeass explosion and flinging enemies everywhere, which while a cool effect, is just the worst to deal with. The solution: keep that scenario to a minimum. You can fling enemies everywhere once in a while, so long as you totally murder those who are hit by it.
As attractive as a defense down advantage is, I think defense-downs are a bit overwrought already. Just my opinion, though. Force doesn't entirely strike me as the type of set to do that sort of effect on a wide scale.
Force Cascade - Imagine that the advantage on FC is the advantage you suggested for Containment Field.
Also I just realized that I mixed up FC's consumption of forcefields (that doesn't exist afaik) with what Energy Storm does to them. whoops.
IDF - Compassion, while it does increase shield strength, doesn't focus chiefly on it - or even strongly. You have to heal to get it stacked. IDF is the 'buffing/tank' form. Your aim here is to ensure that your allies don't get hurt in the first place. To that end, IDF's shield scaling is much stronger than what you get on Compassion.
I now realize, though, I forgot to point out that it should scale with a stat. Probably best would be REC and ...EGO, maybe? Probably END at this rate.
Kinetic Reverberation - It's got a more consistent naming scheme. While I'm pretty tired of every EU being "Something Reverb", I do sort of like how it scales with STR and EGO. Might be better that way? Who knows. Still, we need more stuff scaling off of REC/END.
Shield Breaker - Actually this is leftover from a previous thread where I was making melee-based elementalist sets. To that end, Shield Breaker's actually melee. And a charge. Strongly doubt it'll reach the same throes that TGM has reached, to be honest.
Force Crush - Force already has a great selection of powerful AoEs (Force Cascade, the newly buffed Force Detonation that can very quickly destroy bunched up mobs, and the new Crushing Wave, which is now one of the harder-hitting cones), so I don't think that advantage will be entirley necessary. On the flipside, the combination of Crush already being a powerful single-target attack on its own, alongside that advantage, means that it can be used both to deal damage to its dedicated target, as well as make those devastating AoEs more effective on that focus target.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Except nowhere in any of his posts is there anything that could be misconstrued as him telling anyone to do anything. Honestly, if he put this much thought and effort into this, there's likely to be at least one thing in here that they might look at and say "Hey... we never thought of that before... and we would never have come up with that on our own!". There's also the fact the he kind of seems to get that you can't cherry pick balance adjustments and that it would need to be more of a "sweep of the hand" approach, further raising the likelyhood that there are good ideas.
Any dev who loves their job likely loves reading things like this... probably more than they like reading posts pointing out the same old problems time and time again.
Finally, I'll point out that when it comes to power balance, pointing out what's wrong is often done a lot more clearly when you offer a picture of what it would look like if it was right. Saying "This doesn't do enough damage" is as clear as saying "This number needs to be bigger by any amount between one and infinity".
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
That's the thing. There's a risk that good suggestions in there could be lost in the clutter, and as I said, if the thought process behind the adjustments isn't explained, it can be hard to understand what the problem with it or the objective was.
Imagine if, based on the current trend of the devs' seeming love for spike attacks, they get the impression that the game doesn't have enough spike attacks. So they do something like cherry pick Magnetic Burst, Hunt Down, and Illusory Wound to add to the game.
Then in PvP everyone takes Magnetic Burst, Hunt Down and Illusory Wound and does a combo like Hunt Down -> Ego Surge -> CripC attack -> Force Geyser -> Ice Nade -> Illusory Wound -> Rimefire -> Magnetic Burst.
Rampages become about using Hunted then hopping into a vehicle, or mass Quarry builds using Rimefire and Magnetic Burst.
As far as damage goes, I believe a dev once mentioned they do some kind of spreadsheet analytics to come up with their numbers - it was discussed a bit somewhere here. Something more recent was mentioned, although I can't find it, and outliers like Strafing Run do make me wonder a bit about what exactly this spreadsheet looks like.
When painting with a big brush like this though, I'd expect systemic changes on some level, e.g. give every set a heal, AO, AD or something else. I do see some sets getting something that's been missing, but it doesn't seem to be uniform though.
Because it'd probably see more use that way.
@Chimerafreek
I actually vaguely remember that Shatter's actually a cone attack that requires no target. Theoretically if you back up enough, there shouldn't be too much of an issue getting to shatter everything you need to (provided you have enough energy. Or can move after you root yourself).
But considering the nature of The Glacier, as well as how Ice isn't the most mobile set out there, this is noted.
If a review is missing the addition of a new passive or block or AO/AD, usually it's because something actually does already exist, or (esp. in the case of gadgeteering) the set's too cluttered for me to make ends of.
I really think said spreadsheet was entirely disregarded around the time that the Nighthawk update was done. They do not correlate to any other known powers, power-wise. At best, I think they were chiefly balanced around making the Night Avenger AT playable, but even that seems iffy due to Night Warrior being already a good passive.
AFAIK the disposition for click bursts was Crush's doing, who last I heard, got switched over to NW and is now applying his amazing balancing skills to making the Great Weapon Fighter not horrible. His work is instantly recognizable by everything having recharges, not being practical in chaotic battle situations unless you're a tank, and only towards the end of his tenure (with rimefire burst) becoming useful(read: borderline overpowered).
Actually, that said, that's probably even further proof the whole spreadsheet thing got dropped, because DPS curves don't exactly apply cleanly to single-click bursts with highly variable recharge periods.
PvP, by nature, will always favor certain builds very strongly in any game. There's no changing that. If the optimal PvP build is one that uses a charged haymaker-like attack that uses negative ions (Magnetic Burst's actually a charge. Probably should've clarified...), a minor active power that's made to gear you to take down single targets (and likewise sort of sucks in group situations) and probably one of the few hundred experimental ideas that probably wasn't that well thought out when I came up with it, so be it.
That could work. TC does still need a bone thrown to it, esp. due to Quarry still being way better defensively, as well as more flexible on what it can use.
It still doesn't quite overcome the main problem that MotM has, which is that, for a panic button, you sort of need a panic button to use when you take too much damage as it.
All things considered, MotM might be fixable just by having its moveset tweaked around a lot. I'll have to look into it.
Watch this post. It'll contain heavy weapons, earth, celestial, and darkness.
HEAVY WEAPONS
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
EARTH
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
CELESTIAL
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
DARKNESS
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
That's fair enough.
I think Strafing Run quite easily qualifies as beyond borderline overpowered
Granted, that's using 2GM as a main attack which is resisted by her, but 2GM is also on the high end of the curve and is being used 4 times more often.
Rimefire I agree is a borderline case, just that debuffs are so freely available in the Fire/Ice/Toxic family. If it was say, Sonic/Particle with interactions with Plasma Burn and Disorient for example, it'd still be out of the curve but at least somewhat reasonable. Then there's the other clickies like Mental Storm and Particle Smash, the latter of which is unpopular only because it's overshadowed by Rimefire.
The point here is no so much what builds it favours, but what threshold is raised because of a certain favoured build or combo. Imagine the kind of defenses needed to survive such a combo or first-strike capabilities needed to make that combo airtight - then picture whether more or less builds would be ruled out of PvP with that change.
Of course, that's not to say there's no good ideas in there - some are good, some I'm not sure about. Then again, I'm a little biased as I'd rather see a Champions Online 2, if only to phase out some ideas like the current one-dimensional implementation of vehicles and very limited itemization.
Force Powerset...new ultimate or just high tier power:
Force Annihilation.
1 second charge (must be fully charged, rooted while charging)
60 second cooldown
50 foot sphere PBAoE
Deals Force Geyser-level Crushing Damage to nearby foes.
Foes within 15 feet are Knocked Up.
Foes past 15 feet are knocked back Haymaker distances.
Big boom. Big badaboom u3u
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
1. Set-specific ultimates are something for another thread. Though even if it's just high tier, see 2:
2. This really is what Force Detonation should be like. And maybe a bit of what this move is, just more focused in area, and with a much faster recharge.
I actually like the idea of an inner ring of vertically knocked targets, though. Might have to balance that for Detonation aspects.
Honestly, Rimefire might actually be extremely overpowered. One build I use has a loadout like this:
- Int/Con/Dex based
- Attacks: Ice Blast (hard frost), Frag Grenade (advantage), Ball Lightning (triplicity), Rimefire Burst, Ricochet throw
- Quarry passive, purple heroic gear.
I ran a Fire and Ice with him once, with another player helpfully measuring our DPS. Even leaving the usual OP culprit out of the loop (i.e. Ricochet Throw) and struggling a bit to keep chill stacks up due to Ice Blast only maxing out at like 60% chance of application, I still was like 3rd place in the DPS ranking, doing around 3-4k DPS on a character fumbling around with elemental debuff stacks. And to add to that, they aren't even primarily focused on doing elemental damage with that passive!I still think Strafing Run would be a whole lot more balanced if it only critted like once per run, instead of for every single tick. In my experience, non-crit runs don't really strike me as gigantic bursts of damage, and definitely seem to be what the power was balanced around when first created.
Raising the ceiling on PvP builds is a valid concern, but pretty much every big update to powers has done something in relation to this. I remember back in the day the most feared PvP builds included ones that used Ego Hold and freaking Uppercut - yes, the one with middling DPS, simply because it was really good at stunlocking enemies. - until it got replaced with stuff like Force Geyser and TGM. It's a problem that's always existed, and not really one I'm super focused on fixing. At least, not until stuff like rewards and queues for PvP content are fixed up.
Even then, the issue would probably be best fixed if stuff pertaining to how knock/hold resist stacks and whatnot were tweaked.
SORCERY (general)
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
ARCANE SORCERY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
PRIMAL SORCERY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
EBON SORCERY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
RADIANT SORCERY
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
SUPERNATURAL SHARED
Powers Tweaked:
BESTIAL SUPERNATURAL
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
INFERNAL SUPERNATURAL
Powers Tweaked:
New Powers:
and a bonus.
Travel Powers tweaked:
Regen - more def and bleed synergy is definitely needed. Something like this should be an adv. though.
Frenzy changes are sorely needed; as it stands bestial has to revert to something grossly OOC (for most characters - submachinegun burst) for a good bleed proccer.
Would definitely like a PBAoE (charged or maintained) for bestial. Also should proc bleeds. Would be nice to have something compelling other than Epidemic.
Buff venomous breath a bit compared to epidemic. I would possibly go about this by adjusting proc frequency of poison stacks, as opposed to dmg changes.
An offensive passive for bestial. Currently the options are unstoppable and WOTW (with WOTW ahead due to dodge / bleed); proccing health/def on bleed (as you have for the adv on the Aspect) along with a low basic HOT could make sense in addition to the standard melee boosts.
The Regen's synnergy with self-heals (which there's a surplus of) definitely ties into the need for extra defense. Most other Defense Passives don't synnergize with a specific form of attack, though (I'll make the exception for Equipped/Heavy mode, but that's due to it being a hybrid passive at heart). And really, that's part of the big strength of most Defense Passives, as they basically free you up to take whatever offensive style you please.
The need for a good melee bleeder is recognized, and Frenzy's changes aim to absolve that problem. Though, now that I think of it, single-blade might need an extra leg up on this. Don't remember if I added anything good for it.
Def. See what I can do about a bestial melee PBAoE.
The purpose of Venomous Breath (and really any 'breath' style attack) is less to do damage, and more to apply debuffs to as many targets as possible, as quickly as possible. To that end, moves like Condemn get their damage buffed to become the main AoE 'nukes' of the set.
Now that I'm thinking of it, though, Epidemic also fills that role, and stacks much better, so I might look into changing something about Venombreath around.
I don't really see the rationale for a melee passive for Bestial specifically: Laser Sword technically has it worse off (and still does completely fine), and the damage buffs granted by WotW/Unstoppable serve Bestial just as well as any other melee set.
To make my thread even more incomprehensible, acute readers might note that I'm editing all this stuff for feedback and other ideas I might come up with. Wheeeee.
An idea for a new way to get Single Blade to stack bleeds would be...
Reaper's Whirlwind - Maintained Cone AoE - Uses the Ego Blade Frenzy's single blade animation for a Single Blade version of Eye of the Storm. each tick has a chance to apply, stack and refresh bleed on all targets (up to 5) hit. Advantage - Beat Parry - Provides half the scaling defense of EotS. (also helps give Single Blade another AoE option, which it sorely needs too)
A real AoEs, not cones. It already has cone AoE, but melee cones are probably one of the worst implemented things in CO.
The set is too heavy on single target powers, it makes impossible to build balanced toon using only single blade attacks.
While lag is a major reason this should be adjusted. I may be wrong, but I heard that Earth was one of the few sets where charging has higher DPS than taps. Reinforcing that adds to playstyle differences since it would feel "heavier" this way.
With Fire, I think something it really needs is either something that grants heal on kill or a damage based self rez like Rise of the Phoenix from CoH.
-Sterga
I'll look into it, but in general I'm really leery about PBAoEs of all kinds. They are just too convenient usually, and all too often you just see people charging into battles making huge clouds/sowing whirlwinds/spinning around in place with swords.
But I definitely agree with the part of SB needing some more AoEs.
I wouldn't be surprised about earth. I already can confirm, though, that some moves (such as Faultline) have higher charge damage. This partially seems due to a combination of moderate charge time, and long base animation. Still, however, the big reason I'm pushing for max-charge damage buffs is simply because Earth attacks are inherently pretty bad at damage.
A fire revive/heal could be something. Could help to balance it out against Force's shields, Ice's barriers, and Wind and Electricity's.... uh, storminess.
Really like Reaper's Whirlwind. I think I'll throw that into the sets!
So am I, but why suggest one for might if you are?
So just having a fun, easy-to-use might move to plow through multiple enemies without worrying really about either end of the spectrum would just help, is what I think on that.
Having two other pbaoe powers, one you can decide how you want to knock with, and the other being about the best tanking power in the game.
I am not seeing the how that is weak.
And even if might aoe was weak, how is that a reason to add an attack you say you don't like, why not suggest a good cone?
Honestly? Whirlpunch is a longstanding old power suggestion of mine for Might. I think I came up with it directly after enrage was tweaked and RS was no longer the best way to quickly stack and maintain it.
I've never seen anyone use the TC->RS combo. Back in the day, I even tried it, and the window of success for this maneuver is so slim, you're probably just better off using Havoc Stomp. To that end, that partially explains why I changed RS's advantage to a damage increase, because a knock and a stun is just plain redundant. Over-performing mechanics fall flat in the face of being able to kill things so much more faster (which is partially why the Telepathy rehash - well, really, telepathy in general - didn't fare so well.) And in some cases (like tanking), pure damage actually will in fact still work to the player's advantage (in this case, generating more threat).
I freaking love Thunderclap, but it, alongside Unleashed Rage, is just not a sustainable attack - I.E it has a recharge, and you won't see many builds where TC/UR is the player's only AoE. Havoc Stomp is one of the better ways to control crowds, but suffers from its - again - lower DPS than most attacks, and its unreliability in knocks. Really the more I think about it, the issue lies with inherent problems in those moves, so I might very well go back and see to those.
Mighty Whirl's core purpose really is just pure crushing power brought to multiple targets. Basically the "Sword Cyclone" of might. Even if my hypocrisy is abhorrible, and my phrasing of the power's purpose a bit misleading, It's a damn spinny punch, and yo can't deny that.
Well, it's also an element of "feel". I generally think of fire sets as something that's high damage, no defense, and very much "kill or be killed". I think Darkness or Dark Sorcery has a rez that could mechanically fit Fire's thematic needs if adjusted.
-Sterga
And of course there are not so many people using things like this, for aoe most people are just using high damage pbaoe and/or click spike aoe attacks. Melee cone attacks are pretty much only used for theme.
Which is why Single Blade could use at least one sphere PBAoE. Liked or not, PBAoEs are important part of gameplay mostly because how NPC spawns are structured.
Most of the time it's no problem to use AoE from different powerset for farming and clearing trash, but when character is supposed to be just swordsman, no ninja thrown shurikens or dual blades...
Thene is no choice for this basic functionality in Single Blade powerset.
There's also column dashes, weapon throws, weapon extensions or straight up whips and whip-likes and razor wind.
Could even implement combinations of those as a combo, maybe a 3-step combo like
Part 1: You column dash to the target, repelling everything in your path towards the target or performing a knockto towards the target.
Part 2: Do a melee cone, which should hit everything that was repelled towards the target.
Part 3: Leap up and smash down on the target with a PBAoE, doing knockback to all affected targets.
Scything Blade and Lightwave Slash already spin the character around; mine as well just turn them into sphere AoEs- it wouldn't really be out of place w/ the current anim.
I am fine w/ Cleave and Blade Tempest staying as melee cones, cause they are cheap, basic combos that can be made decent single-target and work well w/ Warden and/or Setup. Small cylinders like Skewer and Skullcrusher can also stay as is, as long as they have more competitive single-target dps like gauntlet chainsaw. Havoc Stomp needs its dps to not-suck when tapped. EB Frenzy can be made a sphere like EotS since it already has the same anim (w/ ID mastery) anyways. MA Claws needs some AoE added that's non-cone and thematic. And the Cyclones could use a Strong Arm adv.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!