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Thoughts about Actives

rtmartma Posts: 1,198 Arc User
edited October 2019 in Power Discussion
Out of curiosity how does the players perceive the standardized Actives offenses and defenses of late especially when it comes to synergising with your own builds theme and/or efficiency wise, perhaps you'd like to rank them on the most useful to least in general with a brief description rating them? since they're 15 seconds long now regardless and how do they compare with each other.
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    spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    Lock'n'Load, neat for bridging between pulls if you have to travel a bit. Neat for a munitions build using Sharp Shooter to start a fight with. I use it on my munitions tank to get a burst of energy at the start of a fight.

    Ego Surge, good for TK builds.


    Those are the only ones I use, my other toons don't use one.
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    flowcytoflowcyto Posts: 12,742 Arc User
    edited October 2019
    - Ego Surge w/ NM: good dps for any build using Ego Leech.
    - Ice Sheath: good dps for any build that can stack Chill (Wall of Ice can help stack Chill in the background).
    - Imbue: good if you can normally pop it when you're at lower health.
    - LNL: okay generalist dps AO that can also boost crit heals and add Willpower heals.
    - Ascension: can also boost (self)healing, give flight, and combo w/ Illumination.
    - Aggressor: can also give Tanks a minor maxHP boost.

    I wouldn't put a high priority on getting a normal AO for most pve builds, but they can still have their uses.

    For the normal ADs: Resurgence is still a good burst heal that now also has a nice regen effect. Indestructible can effectively replace R1 MD for non-tanks as a mitigation cd. MD can still be good, but outside of dodge builds you'd have to rank it now to go over 100% dodge w/ it. Unbreakable is decent for a large dmg shield cd. Ice Barrier has the potential to be a great tanking cd, but it's tied to its ice pillars being near & not destroyed. Field Surge is basically still just for PFF builds.
    since they're 12 seconds long now regardless and how do they compare with each other.
    (also, ADs and AOs have a fixed duration of 15 sec now- aside from Ice Barrier's ice objects lasting upto 30sec)
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    spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    edited October 2019
    "nice regen effect" pfft, it's Wolverine on crack. Shoulda seen our faces when we tested it day after teh change, we were like "Is this really supposed to be like this??". Resurgence is basically the best general purpose AD now. MD r3 is still best for tanks/Kiga CCers looking to survive big hits, but even tanks can do great with Resurgence. All other ADs are silly now.
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    pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    There are a few situations where I'd take indestructible on a dps, but yeah, resurgence is kinda crazy.
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    flowcytoflowcyto Posts: 12,742 Arc User
    edited October 2019
    spinnytop wrote: »
    "nice regen effect" pfft, it's Wolverine on crack. Shoulda seen our faces when we tested it day after teh change, we were like "Is this really supposed to be like this??". Resurgence is basically the best general purpose AD now. MD r3 is still best for tanks/Kiga CCers looking to survive big hits, but even tanks can do great with Resurgence. All other ADs are silly now.
    Eh, I noticed it on the PTS then too and commented on the regen effect. Apparently it's intended to be that way. I would agree that it's prob too much atm (Resurgence was imo fine even w/o that effect), though the AD still can't technically fill the role of a mitigation cd, so there's still some room for the others atm.
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    nbkxsnbkxs Posts: 768 Arc User
    For offenses, unless you're an ice character using ice sheath, or a TK blade character using ego surge for the minor +crits, all of them are absolutely useless, and do literally nothing for +dmg on a properly built character. For defenses, resurge is a great oh-**** button, and MD is great for a tank getting started on the cosmic battles. Unbreakable is good for pvp. All of the rest of them are on the pile of, 'I would never put them in my build because they suck'.
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    pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    It's not quite nothing, but an ordinary active offense at rank 3 is probably around a 12% real damage boost when up and an average dps boost of under 3%. That's generally not worth the power slot, advantage points, and effort to work into your rotation.
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    blumoon8blumoon8 Posts: 430 Arc User
    Ohhhh, the comments in this thread answer a question of mine. I'm working on the build for my DPS fire toon. She has some pretty top tier gear. When testing on super villain training dummies, she gets no improvement to her damage. Sometimes she'd do a bare 100 more on crits, other times I actually noticed my damage going down. This was all eyeballed without a parser. Nice to know I can ditch Immolation.
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    spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    "properly built character". Adding that to the buzzword list.
    Squishy DPS builds that can solo QWZ w/videos.
    My super cool CC build and how to use it.
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    pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    So, some real numbers, as I found I have a ranked active offense on a character (who has not been recently retconned, so that decision was based on an old version).

    With 8 stacks of Untapped Power, my lightning arc is 1,330 tooltip value.
    With Lock and Load (R2) that increases to 1,395 (+4.9%)

    It also gets me 2% of crit chance because of Furious; my severity is fairly low so that's +1.7% in the crit layer. As I already have +61% in that layer, that's a real increase of slightly over 1%, for a final dps increase of about 6%. Also, that bonus only lasts 12s, instead of 15s like the active offense. Cooldown is 74s so the overall real damage increase if use it every time it comes off cd is 1.2%. Rank 3 would be about 1.6%. The energy cost reduction is irrelevant because I don't have energy problems even without an active offense.
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    spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    4.9% is more than you'll get from putting anything else in that power slot.
    Squishy DPS builds that can solo QWZ w/videos.
    My super cool CC build and how to use it.
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    avianosavianos Posts: 6,028 Arc User
    There is also the fact that some AOs don't give you the same useful benefits like others, in fact some actually counter productive or repeatitive for their own powerframes

    Immolation for example
    Discounts your Energy costs by 33% COOL but with the Fire revamp, chances are you will barely have any energy issue in the first place! None of my Fire DPS character have energy issues
    25% chance to apply Clinging Flames to foes that attack you Your fire passive, Fiery Form, also has 20% chance to apply Clinging Flames to foes that attack you, Why would you repeat the same effect which even thought it stack, it useless since chances are you already use a stable way to apply CFs with your attacks

    It doesn't provide anything essential for a Fire DPS

    Shadow Shroud
    For 12 seconds after activating this power, receiving damage will cause you to gain +19& energy. This can occur once every 3 sec After Darkness revamp(s) barely you will have issues with energy, unless you use this on Tank
    Terrifying Vissage and Nigh Vision really should have been default features of this AO (on a less benefit way of course)

    And consider that a lot of powerframes don't have their own Themed AOs (Sorcery, Laser Sword, Force, Archery, Earth e.t.c)​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
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    spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    So wait... on the one hand your issue is that AOs are useless... but then you complain that not all powerframes have one? .-.
    Squishy DPS builds that can solo QWZ w/videos.
    My super cool CC build and how to use it.
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    avianosavianos Posts: 6,028 Arc User
    spinnytop wrote: »
    So wait... on the one hand your issue is that AOs are useless... but then you complain that not all powerframes have one? .-.
    More variety of anything is always nice, for theme and aesthetics' sake ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    and I bet DEVs may give those new AOs more beneficial features which will Domino back to the least useful AOs, meaning a Buff​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
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