To give my own thoughts on some of these changes...
Intelligence: the nerf to Detect Vulnerability was already more than enough in the first place, and really Ego should have been buffed instead, but now it's been nerfed an extra 2% down? To cap at around 38% instead of around 40%, for... some reason? And Enlightened has been bumped to the top row of Int specs, leaving literally not enough things on the bottom row to take as a DPS for a DPS primary in the first place? Consider this: on Live, where Intelligence still isn't nerfed, the only reason Intelligence performs as well as Ego is due to the extremely high defpen being able to just barely reach 60%. If you want Intelligence to be "more balanced" then the nerf to 40% just in and of itself would be more than enough to insure Ego maintains superiority against low-Def% targets while Intelligence maintains superiority against high-Def% targets. Swapping Revitalized and Enlightened as-is is incredibly stupid. To that end, I have several... suggestions (in the "keeping Intelligence useful rather than turning it into the worthless slop that Rec-prime and End-prime are" vein of things) to make.
Suggestion: revert Detect Vulnerability from its current ~38% cap to the prior ~40% cap. Do I really need to explain why flat numbers are more appealing, and why Detect Vulnerability doesn't need to be kicked while it's already down?
Suggestion: merge Enlightened and Expertise into one singular 2-point spec that increases the base bonuses of both SSSes and all non-Superstats by 10%/20%. This would free up the top row of Intelligence specs that slightest bit more for the following two suggestions...
Suggestion: change Enlightened to instead provide a large Critical Chance bonus based on Secondary Superstats. This would enable Intelligence to take on an alternative playstyle in which it stacks a SSS instead of Intelligence, similar to how Str-prime Dex stacking, Ego-prime Dex-stacking and Dex-prime Ego-stacking or Dex-prime Str-stacking are all valid off-meta choices. This would entail barely getting any use out of Detect Vulnerability, but then, that's the idea: opening up a new playstyle without hinging on Detect Vulnerability, which was and still is the ONLY reason to use Int-prime as it currently is.
Suggestion: change/replace Revitalize with a spec that provides a small Critical Severity bonus based on Secondary Superstats. Nobody ever uses their Energy Builder ever unless they're forced to, which is relegated almost exclusively to poorly-built ATs, poorly-built FFs, and some leveling builds. This change would further reinforce the idea provided with the Enlightened change of building around Secondary Superstats as an alternative higher-chance-and-sev lower-defpen alternative to pure Int stacking.
Now with all that in mind, the change to Intelligence Mastery is a nice one, but I have something better in mind since, and I'm going to be honest, stacking a Superstat and giving extra energy on its own isn't exactly impressive. In fact, arguably, if you're running Intelligence as a primary, more Intelligence is what you need the least. It reads pretty clearly that this is mostly just to help The Fissile be quasi-functional as an AT (though even in its current state it struggles horribly with max energy.) So...
Suggestion: change Intelligence Mastery to the following: a 1.25x multiplier to both Energy Equilibrium and Maximum Energy and a 25% bonus to cooldown reduction of all non-Ultimate powers. This is to give Intelligence Mastery more energy flexibility without directly stacking up even more damage (since you're- as it is now- guaranteed to be stacking an Int toggleform if you're running Intelligence primary) as well as giving it some of Intelligence Primary's strength in situations where you're not actively stacking Intelligence, which would matter more if taking the suggestions provided above to allow Intelligence to function for both PSS-stacking and SSS-stacking builds.
There's so, so much that can be done with Intelligence Primary. Let's not nerf it into the dirt because "energy-stat primaries need to be dogwater." In fact, I'd love to see Rec Prime and End Prime buffed in the future, but that's not the focus here. Moving on...
Cosmic Gear: I have nothing meaningful to suggest here. Just a "thank GOD this bug's finally been fixed." Because Cosmic Presence utterly neutered combo DPSes in any content where the two were brought together. It was genuinely awful. It also nerfed other DPSes as well because of this same bug. I'll be happy to see this fix hit Live.
Flamethrower: Same as the above. Nothing really noteworthy to say about the changes here, whether to the base power or to the Spitfire adv. It's a microscopic buff that doesn't really mean much of anything in the long run, but that also means this isn't going to make anyone scream and cry about being outparsed by 0.05% by a Flamethrower build or anything.
Fire Breath: Same as the above once again, though with the exception of highlighting that Chemical Burn changing the damage type to Particle in and of itself is absolutely welcome and benefits mixing this with more Particle-heavy builds and Plasma Burn rupturing builds more.
Accelerated Metabolism: Neat I guess? Accel Metab is still hot garbage though, since a minute chance to proc an incredibly miniscule amount of energy once every (X) seconds will always be near-pointless. Consider:
Suggestion: change Accelerated Metabolism to instead reduce the base energy cost of any power it's taken on by 10%. (Read alternatively: it applies a 0.9x multiplier to the energy costs of the power in choice.) This would, uh, make Accelerated Metabolism actually useful, and the kind of thing some more finnicky builds might actually benefit from, even if most builds won't have energy problems in the first place without this Adv.
On-Next-Hit: Admittedly I've never cared to use multiple On-Next-Hits together so I wouldn't be able to reasonably give feedback on this even if I had any. Still, a cooldown reduction is always welcome in a game that obsesses over timing.
Bionic Shielding: Aaand it's ruined. (Okay, not literally, but we just came off the back of unnecessary cooldowns being reduced. Why are we giving Bionic Shielding a second cooldown on top of the existing 15-second-cooldown on each target?) The primary purpose of Bionic Shielding was to quickly feed a backload of healing to several teammates in anticipation of a wave of incoming damage, commonly add-waves in lairs and alerts, but this essentially limits it to only being used for one person at a time, which... great for score-farming Cosmic tanks I guess? Not nearly as good everywhere else. And by everywhere else, I mostly mean babysitting DPS squishies that seem intent on sticking a fork in the nearest electrical outlet as aggressively as humanly possible. Mind you, Bionic Shielding is never and was never a requirement for healing, but... seriously? Technically still usable for a 5-man team, but that means stopping every 3 seconds on the dot to apply Bionic Shielding to someone, which, from personal experience, isn't fun unless it's part of a specific rotation. And "oh god they're all dying and I'm next" is not part of a specific rotation.
Suggestion (A): revert Bionic Shielding to its prior state. Since the current change to it feels like obvious Technological Advancements fodder, just consider making it stack Technological Advancements by default/immediately on application anyways, or, since healers almost never have energy issues, simply... not bother with that? And just let healers stack Technological Advancements through other means. There's nothing wrong with this.
Suggestion (B): change Bionic Shielding from an effective "on next hit heal" to a true HoT. Make it proc its healing once every 3 seconds (at the 0/3/6/9/12/15 second mark) no matter what for six ticks total.
Either of these would be applicable, and I would greatly prefer the former (reverting Bionic SHielding to its prior, already fine and functional state) I can see the benefits of the latter. Having said that...
Suggestion: give Bionic Shielding a 2-point adv that provides a bonus 33% Def% to any target affected by it. NOTE: this wouldn't expire when Bionic Shielding's healing expires, instead only expiring when Bionic Tampering expires/when 15 seconds is up.
Suggestion: give Bionic Shielding a matching 2-point adv that provides 3.3% Energy Regeneration to any target affected by it. Just like the above, it would last for the duration of Bionic Tampering/a full 15 seconds, rather than expiring whenever Bionic Shielding's healing is consumed.
If we're going to push into the territory of making Bionic Shielding gimmicky so that it feeds Technological Advancements, then lets take it all the way and take notes from other Technology powers. (Namely Medical Beam and Power Conversion for the two above suggestions.)
Plasma Cannon: Nice I suppose? I mean, don't get me wrong, bugfixes are good. The problem is, bugfixes or no, this power is still completely unable to consistently refresh Plasma Burns and Disintegrate. Oh, mind you, it hits hard, which is nice, especially for situations like Teleiosaurus DPS checks, but I'm not taking a power for one specific situation unless that specific situation is death and I am a healer. Plasma Cannon does not fix death and is not a healer power, so... yeah.
Suggestion: I keep saying it. Plasma Cannon needs a shorter cooldown, enough to be usable (within) once every 15 seconds. Otherwise, why take it when there are now other much better and easier options for maintaining a full 5 stacks of Plasma Burn? (The answer just to pass mama dino's DPS checks, which, again, using it for one specific situation and nowhere else?...
Resurrection Serum: Contrasting the bad change to Bionic Shielding for the sake of forcing it to benefit the new technology healer toggleform, this change to Resurrection Serum to force it to benefit the new technology healer toggleform is a good one. The reduction of cooldown from 15 seconds to 3 is huge for actually being able to use this rez in a situation where lots of people are dying rapidly, I.E. open content, and the new Adv to give it more parity with other rez-others by letting it rez multiple people at once is also a welcome QoL increase. Yeah, needless to say, I like this change.
Experimental Burst Ray: This is a tiny DPS buff but only if Overcharging, which is incredibly risky if you're using Experimental Burst Ray as an AoE. So, no real strong thoughts or feelings either way? An increase from 50% to 60% maximum Overcharge damage is nice, though it doesn't quite compare to the old 100% of Live/pre-rework Experimental Burst Ray. Though this does lead me to a thought:
Suggestion: give Experimental Burst Ray a new 2-point Adv, "Prototype Stability Module" or something to that effect, that removes the ability to Overcharge entirely and increases damage by 40% instead of an extra rank's 20%.
Attack Toys: I really need to use more controllable pets, I used to use these a LOT in years past and would have more meaningful feedback than I do now. As it is now, though? Yeah. Yes please to any fixes that make pets commit self-delete by voluntary fall damage less often.
Detonator Switch: Same as the above. I rarely use controllable pets, or pets in general, so I can't say anything about this. My only lament is; who's using controllable pets when practically anything tougher than a Grab Alert has fifteen pet nukes built into it that won't let you even consistently spawn pets to use Detonator Swtich with?
Strafing Run: As near as I can figure, this is a good change. It still hits hard enough to justify being used, and it being placed automatically on the primary target means it's now usable on targets that aren't on the ground, and usable period in environments like underwater fights and flying fights where you just couldn't do squat with it before. The increase in AoE size is nice as well, as is the Adv to change its damage type to Particle, though considering that unlike certain other damage-type-changing Advs this comes with no other effect (and Fire damage is arguably """better""" than Particle due to more defpen debuffs being available for it, said Adv feels... eh. Not as good as it could be. With that in mind...)
Suggestion (A): reduce Chemical Fire Adv to 0-point cost from 1-point, since Chemical Fire doesn't provide any bonus secondary effects to Strafing Run. Or alternatively...
Suggestion (B): remove Chemical Fire Adv entirely and instead make "Particle Strafing Run" a completely new power in and of itself.
Pulse Beam Rifle: Bonus Critical Severity is nice, but the core problem with the current iteration of Pulse Beam Rifle stands: its energy cost is around 1.5x that of Assault Rifle's for dealing equivalent damage. (On a completely blank character, Assault Rifle is 39/0.67sec activation + 15/0.5sec maintain for 4.67sec max while Pulse Beam Rifle is 27/0.5sec activation + 27/0.5sec maintain for 4.5sec max, for a total of 159 energy per 4.67sec for Assault Rifle (~34/sec base) and 243 energy per 4.5sec for Pulse Beam Rifle (54/sec base.) Of note, Sonic Beam- the other "max-tier single-target DPS power" for Gadgeteering- is cheaper than Assault Rifle. Additionally, both of these have Advs that further increase their base damage when combined with a passive secondary effect that also increases their damage, unlike Pulse Beam Rifle which just has R3.) Read all that and tell me Pulse Beam Rifle needs to cost 1.5x more than powers with Advs that boost their damage above it. (And that's to say nothing about Rapid Shots likewise being cheaper and having more output than Pulse Beam Rifle.) So!
Suggestion: REDUCE PULSE BEAM RIFLE'S ENERGY COST. There is no mathematical reason for it to have as high a cost as it has. It costs 1.5x that of its counterparts (Assault Rifle, Sonic beam, Rapid Shots) while doing comparable at-rank damage in a vacuum but lower damage when allowing for Advs and synergies with other powers and effects.
Suggestion: give Pulse Beam Rifle an adv that makes it do 30% bonus damage (and have a bonus 10% critical chance and severity) against targets affected by Disintegrate.
Technological Prowess: Oh thank god. The change to allow this toggleform to proc off full Technology charges and full Technology maintains in particular targets this towards the Technology sets while in that same stead also allowing it to actually function independently of Molecular Self-Assembly. What more do I say? What more can I say? This- along with the current change to Intelligence Mastery- allows The Fissile to actually quasi-function where it just flat-out couldn't before, and overall provides an alternative for anyone who doesn't want to use the usual ego-stacking, dex-stacking and int-stacking "procs on half-charge and half-maintain or constantly at a distance" toggleforms. As it is now, I can't think of anything else I would suggest for this.
Experimental Blaster: No real solid thoughts here, just the usual "bugfixes are good, I like being able to play the game." What more is there to say?
Plasma Radiation: Oooooh boy! I have some thoughts about this one and I can't wait to share them! So, first things first, this appears to be a Particle damage Flamethrower expy, which lends validity to my prior suggestion for Particle Strafing Run being its own power. Having said that, what immediately stands out is that Plasma Radiation deals slightly less damage than Flamethrower does and has a smaller energy cost, while having an identical AoE size. With its advs for refreshing both Plasma Burns and Disintegrates consistently, it seems to trade damage for utility, which is further exemplified by it having the gimmick-y "more damage but stops working randomly" Adv instead of Flamethrower's Single Minded. With that in mind, my lament is that something that looks like it should deal high damage is being relegated to utility, similar to Flamethrower but more pronounced. To that end, I have suggestions for this one.
Suggestion: increase Plasma Radiation's damage and energy cost to match Flamethrower's. It's fine hitting a tiny bit harder and costing a tiny bit more, honestly; its strong utility still stands either way and isn't overshadowed if you make it hit a miniscule fraction more.
Suggestion: give Plasma Radiation the same 50% Single Minded Adv that Flamethrower has. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: the option to lean fully into the DPS aspect of things and use it as a middling-damage ramp-up instead of a low-damage utility. Of course, you can only do one or the other, not both, which leads me into...
Suggestion: give both Plasma Radiation and Flamethrower another Adv; this one increasing base damage by 50% straight out the gate but narrowing the AoE from 30* to 15*, effectively turning these into quasi-cylinders bordering on faux-single-target. This would allow both to take on a similar role to something like Force Cascade, if noticeably weaker: the option to be used for sweeping groups of mobs or to be used for focused fire on singular heavy targets.
With that said the first two of these suggestions I absolutely insist on while the last one is more a matter of build flexibility. I have noticed that the current iteration of the Fissile is restricted to Plasma Radiation as its dedicated AoE, and giving it essentially a weaker Flamethrower just seems... iffy. At least something like the Soldier has a particular Submachinegun Burst PVD that costs way too much (it needs to be fixed, but I digress) to make up for its dedicated AoE. If Plasma Radiation is going to be forced to be a dedicated AoE for an AT then I feel it should be able to actually stand on its own, assuming it doesn't get a PVD that's still compatible with Energy damage. To that end, please consider the damage and energy cost increase to match Flamethrower and please consider giving it the same 50% Single Minded Adv that its Fire cousin has.
Technological Advancements: I don't feel strongly either way about this new one. It's another healer toggleform that doesn't directly reward you for healing but instead for doing something unrelated to keeping your allies alive that in turn helps you, well, keep them alive harder. Just like Fear Consumption, I imagine this probably won't be used all that often outside of people intentionally avoiding the generic Meta Thing(tm) but at the very least it is another option that works on a technical level. My only complaint is certain... other powers (Bionic Shielding) being nerfed just to force them to work together with this Toggleform, when Technological Advancements could instead be... actually, you know what? I'm going to suggest that right now.
Suggestion: change Technological Advancements to proc whenever using any Technology power not tagged as a direct damaging attack, as well as whenever any Technology power comes off cooldown.
Energy Blaster: Neat! Nobody uses their EB unless absolutely forced to so this really doesn't matter, but as far as flavor/aesthetic goes (since nobody uses their EB unless forced to or unless their build is bad, EBs are pretty much only for aesthetic) more options are always welcome.
Particle Blaster: Alright, now we're getting somewhere! A faster (arguably in most cases better) alternative to Experimental Blaster for slapping Disintegrate on things both for our resident new AT and for builds that aren't using a device or the funny Grond punch for it. Of course, with that in mind, since we're leaning away from the RNG-y gimmicks and towards more general utility, I have a few suggestions for Particle Blaster here too.
Suggestion: add a 2-point Adv that makes Particle Blaster refresh all Plasma Burns on full charge. This seems like a pretty simple, basic no-brainer for a power like this.
Suggestion: change the Radioactive Decay Adv to instead turn particle Blaster into a 10ft sphere on the primary target. Advs for things like Disintegrate application would apply to all targets hit in this case, not just the primary target. Likewise, Plasma Burn application chance would remain 25%-100% on secondary targets as well.
Suggestion: add a 2-point Adv that makes Particle Blaster spawn a good old traditional Secondary Pyre Patch (the lower-damage 10 second variety) underneath the primary target on full charge.
Eye Lasers: It figures that we start getting powers that do variable ranged or melee damage depending on distance from the target, like, a month after I try to write a PVD thread suggesting several mixed melee+ranged PVDs only to wind up unable to post it because it was close to 4x the post size cap. That said, this feels somewhat out-of-place for the Laser Sword set as far as theme goes, though as far as utility goes it fills a similar role to Particle Blaster, which I highly appreciate. However, this... really does low damage. Which, for pure utility isn't a concern, but come on, this is the first (excluding a certain buggy Lance+Annihilation PVD that everyone loves but I haven't cared enough to use) power we have that's both melee and ranged depending on how you use it! Come on, let's show it a little more love than that!
(Minor) bug: Eye Lasers is categorized as a Ranged Area Attack in the powers menu despite being single-target and having no Advs that would make it an area attack of any kind.
Suggestion: make both melee and ranged Eye Lasers a 2ft cylinder. (Keep its damage output the same as it currently is. It already deals very low damage; there's no reason to make it deal less. A higher energy cost would be acceptable though.)
Suggestion: give Eye Lasers a 2-point Adv that increases its base damage on a target by 12% per stack of Plasma Burn.
Suggestion: give Eye Lasers a 2-point Adv that increases its base damage on a target by 60% if Disintegrate and/or Burn Through is present on the target.
The formermost suggestion is for the sake of overall utility and flexibility. The latter two, however, are for the sake of leaning hard into pure DPS with a power very clearly designed to look like it hits hard, being a not-Cyclops beam and all. (For what it matters, 1.6*1.6 melee Eye Lasers still wouldn't hit quite as hard as 1.2*1.35 Luminescent Slash, and even a no-adv 1.2*1.2 Luminescent Slash would hit slightly harder, which seems fine to me. In turn, Eye Beam's ranged version doing lower damage than its melee version by default should cover the intended disparity between melee and ranged damage just fine.)
All in all, I am not pleased with the needless extra nerfs to Intelligence because "Ego needs to be stronger" when Ego itself is lacking in the first place and should be buffed instead of nerfing Intelligence (if Strength and Dexterity are anything to go by,) while in turn most of the power changes do seem nice, and the new powers seem useful, if light on actual damage potential (though the added utility is always welcome.)
The fact that the forums refuse to tell you how close you are to the character/post size limit until you attempt to post something that happens to be too big- and the automated spam filter will immediately completely lock you out of posting long-term if you attempt to post or edit posts too close to the character limit- is genuine agony.
With some conversation and reading, there is something to be agreed upon;
Suggestion
Give Pulse Beam Rifle a 30% base damage advantage
It hadn't occurred to me until I actually parsed the Fissile, but PBR is... astoundingly weak. Funnily enough, this was the same case as Rapid Shots years back where I was commenting that it desperately needs higher damage to be even close to the other options. An advantage to give it better base damage would be ideal, and it can be done with Disintegrate or Plasma Burn, much like its neighboring Sonic Beam has one for having Deafening on the target. If it's a balancing concern because of the Critical Strike/Severity thing, well, you could make an advantage to heavily increase the damage but remove the ramping effect. Rapid Shots lost its mobility for better damage, I'm sure losing a gimmick for damage would be just as well.
With some conversation and reading, there is something to be agreed upon;
Suggestion
Give Pulse Beam Rifle a 30% base damage advantage
After a little testing, this might have been an opinion formed from the lens of the Fissile, as it does decently for a Freeform that has flexibility in their passive and stat choice. I'm still going to say it could use an advantage that removes its gimmick for more base damage, as I think it could be better, but one thing my testing did reveal outside of the Fissile... this thing guzzles energy way too hard and is difficult to synergize with an EU, as it wouldn't proc anything but Overdrive.
Suggestion
Reduce the maintain cost for Pulse Beam Rifle
The struggle to get this thing to work led me to using an out-of-set copout that I only use when an energy guarantee is needed, and boy would it clash so hard with any relevant themes. The activation cost is on point for other tier 3 maintains, but the fact it costs the exact same amount to maintain it will break a lot of builds trying to employ it. If this increases the activation cost, so be it, but the maintain definitely needs to be lower.
Bug
Plasma Cannon > Technological Prowess
Fully charging Plasma Cannon does not Stack Technological Prowess form.
I'm not able to repro this.
I am able to reproduce this bug. In the fissile AT, having its form at rank 1 and Plasma Cannon at rank 3, the form doesn't provide another stack of its buff.
Useful Guides about Archetypes and General Gameplay of the Game Click Here
I'm still going to say it could use an advantage that removes its gimmick for more base damage, as I think it could be better
Suggestion
Probability Inhibitor Chip (2 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of the power by 40%, but removes the ability to ramp-up Critical Strike and Severity.
This advantage could also reduce the amount of variance it has, but implementation in general would be nice to at least try. While this power can have high critical strikes, the variance makes it very unlikely to be consistently good, combined with the fact that this power relies on you fully maintaining to maximize potential in an environment that will repeatedly make you block or otherwise interrupt your maintains, there should be some consideration to an advantage like this, or simply bumping the base damage a little higher slash tightening the variance. Alternatively;
Plasma-Ignition Beam (1 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of this power by 2% per stack of Plasma Burn on the target
Or Plasma-Ignition Beam (2 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of this power by 10% per stack of Plasma Burn on the target, but removes the ability to ramp-up Critical Strike and Severity.
This would give more synergy to the rest of Gadgets, as it currently has no interaction, on top of giving PBR the damage boost it needs to be competitive with other options, as how it is currently leaves it as underperforming, especially in a non-test environment where fully maintaining isn't always possible. Please consider at least adding it to PTS for testing.
Bug
The Ranged version of Eye Lasers do not have the Plasma Burn refresh effect.
Suggestion
Increase the damage of the Ranged version of Eye Lasers
Particle Blaster I understand why it won't be buffed, but there's a case for Eye Lasers here; specifically, the fact that when it turns to the melee power it becomes melee damage. This removes any sort of benefit from Role or Ego, causing the multi-power factor to be an actual detriment to the player. Bearing that in mind, it functions exactly the same as Infernal Blast: 100ft, self-rooting, applies a DoT, refreshes said DoT, with the only difference being that it gets weaker if you're in close range. Please consider bringing it in line, at least the Ranged damage version.
Going to keep this much shorter because I keep putting off other things in favor of writing overly long CO posts and I really, really should stop doing that. Now:
- Intelligence Spec Tree
Bug: Detect Vulnerability still erroneously hard-capping at 38% instead or 40%. (This reduction was not mentioned in patch notes where it happened and is such presumably a bug. Additionally, its soft cap of 30% appears to have dropped from 350 to 300.
Suggestion: change Revitalize to instead provide its cooldown reduction when dealing any direct damage or direct healing with any power. Once again, nobody is ever EBing with Intelligence as their Primary, or in general really, which means this is still a dead spec.
Alternate suggestion: replace Revitalize with a 2-rank spec that gives a small bonus to Critical Severity based on how high the user's Intelligence is. Now that we have two specs that scale with Intelligence/PSS and three specs that scale with SSSes, we still need to address that Intelligence has no means of gaining extra Crit Sev, which is more problematic now that Detect Vulnerability- which was supposed to be Intelligence's answer to its own lack of Crit Sev- is being nerfed.
Overall, the changes to Intelligence seem interesting, with much more of an emphasis on secondary-stacking now, especially with Detect Vulnerability soft-capped at 350, but then the lack of Critical Severity is still problematic, considering the nerf to Detect Vulnerability hinders Intelligence from doing its job: it's supposed to perform better against high-Def% bosses and worse against swarms of low-Def% mooks, opposing Ego performing worse against high-Def% bosses and better against swarms of low-Def% mooks. Shifting Intelligence from primarily PSS stacking to SSS stacking doesn't lend Intelligence the flexibility it deserves when its counterpart of Ego can PSS or SSS stack viably depending on the build. Dexterity has a similar if less severe problem of not scaling offensively with itself at all, contrasting Strength having plenty of flexibility for stacking PSS or SSSes, but I digress.
Another thought would be that the change to Enlightened, entertainingly, shoots AoPM in the foot for Intelligence builds yet paradoxically makes Intelligence more viable as a healer directly. Of course, since the "ideal" for DPSes, tanks and (some) healers now is Preparation 2/2 Tactician 3/3 on the bottom row, this isn't too drastic a loss, since the benefits of getting fed more of both SSSes will be more pronounced. (Of particular note to me is the trading of the effective 1.3x multiplier on HP from friendly AoPMs for a slight to moderate bump in defense, and this actually being the viable choice for non-tanks. Overall, I quite like this change! It's a bump in flexibility that Intelligence sorely needs, though it needs more still.)
Lastly, the buff of 10 max energy to Mastery is nice but ultimately still kind-of meaningless since Intelligence by nature will be drowning in energy at practically all times. Of particular note, though, is that this doesn't apply to some ATs with questionable design choices behind them. (Fissile for example NEEDS this bonus max energy since it doesn't have the correct choice of End instead of Rec as a SSS.) Which is why, in contrast, I have one rather wild suggestion to make Intelligence Mastery much more interesting without giving a boost in direct damage output.
Wild suggestion: change Intelligence Mastery to give a 20% bonus to the size of AoEs on area powers, and the range of all powers whether single target or ranged. (Something like 1ft for every 5ft of inherent range, resulting in 10ft melee and 10ft spheres being 12ft, 15ft melee being 18ft, 25ft spheres being 30ft, 50ft ranged being 60ft, 100ft ranged being 120ft, 5ft wide cylinders being 6ft wide, 10ft wide cylinders being 12ft wide, etcetera. Also +1* for every 5* on Cones, expanding 30* cones to 36*, 45* cones to 54*, so on and so forth.) This would be a massive boost in flexibility for Intelligence builds, valuable for DPSes and tanks and healers, without just being a direct increase to damage potential.
But, moving on to smaller and tamer things.
- Power variant Devices
Hopefully this includes Ultimate Chest Beam? I reported that one months ago and it never got a response. Fingers crossed!
- Powers
This is nice for less-optimized DPSes as well as Technology tanks I suppose! Download's always been a weird case that existed mostly to justify the jank that is Luminescent Slash sharing a seat with Rec and End on "90% energy at all times or BAAAAAD" so long as you built your character properly, and served basically no purpose beyond that... or at least, it didn't until we got that one Cybermind PVD I forget the name of because nobody uses it. But it does have its place in some builds anyways. However, a thought occurs: these new Download Advs are taking after old Download Advs that cost 2 adv points, instead of the newer "USB Arrow" Download Advs from Archery that only cost 1 adv point.
Suggestion: change both the new Downloads being added now and the old Downloads from past LS powers to match USB Arrow's 1-adv-point cost.
- Pulse Beam Rifle
Finally. The change from 27+27/0.5sec to 30+23/0.5sec still leaves PBR slightly more expensive than its counterparts, but actually in the realm of viability now. Additionally, the return of Finite Improbability Engine as an effective curve flattener to deal away with the backloading allows PBR to be viable in situations where its user is constantly forced to stop attacking, like the infamous easy example of Teleiosaurus. This is very good. If I had to come up with any single suggestion though, then it would be that, unless I'm mistaken with my numbers, Pulse Beam Rifle is still more expensive and less damaging than R2+Uncompromising Assault Rifle, which in turn is lacking compared to other powers and PVDs.
Suggestion: give Pulse Beam Rifle a 2-point Adv that makes it deal +6% damage per stack of Plasma Burn on the target. This would fill in for PBR's missing "+30% or more on the dedicated single-target attack power" Adv, and require more maintenance than JUST tapping a defense debuff on a target every now and then, and the resulting damage output would be something like, and again, this is assuming my napkin math is correct, ~6% higher than R2+Uncomp Assault Rifle, while current PBR without a +30% Adv winds up doing something in the rough realm of ~4% less than R2+Uncomp AR. Again, keep in mind that Assault Rifle is much more drastically overshadowed by other single-target powers as well as other PVDs, so something doing slightly better than it still wouldn't top charts like other competitors would.[/color]
- Orbital Cannon
No real solid thoughts; this'll be nice for The Fissile as well as some other builds but won't be a must-take. Still, only refreshing for something that takes so long to wind up and requires a full wind-up to fire off is... iffy. With that in mind:
Suggestion: change this new Adv to instead apply Disintegrate and have a high chance of applying multiple stacks of Plasma Burn.
- Particle Blaster/Eye Lasers
This is nice in concept, but now that Plasma Burns are actually a lot easier to apply in the first place, just being able to refresh them if three are already on a target seems a bit... odd? But, first things first.
Bug: both Particle Blaster and Eye Lasers are not refreshing Plasma Burn correctly; they appear occasionally refresh the oldest stack but not any of the others, though it's hard to tell if this is the case for sure in testing. Tested at R1, wearing Nemesis/Catalyst Heirlooms, Int/Rec/End with no Slotted Passive and no specs. This bug applies to tapping, partial charges and full charges.
Bug: ranged Eye Lasers doesn't refresh Plasma Burn at all, not even the current buggy way melee Eye Lasers and Particle Blaster are going about it. Additionally, ranged Eye Lasers is missing the mention of refreshing Plasma Burns in its tooltip. Tested in the above conditions.
Now, having mentioned that, my suggestion for both of these is a simple one.
Suggestion: buff Particle Blaster/Eye Lasers' Plasma Burn refresh to instead refresh all Radiation Effects on tap/minimum use, to match Infernal Blast and Bite refreshing all Poison Effects on tap.
- Experimental Burst Ray
Neat I suppose? My only real thought here is that healers won't ever use Experimental Burst Ray to place a Healing Rune when they can just... use Soul Vortex. Or Medical Arrow. Or Pillar of Poz. This is just another dead spec that won't see use outside of people forcing themselves to use it explicitly because it isn't going to be used otherwise, in much the same way people force themselves to try and build Earth or Celestial DPSes on occasion. To change that and make this actually useful...
Suggestion: change the Runes spawned by this Adv to not count to the Rune cap of 1, allowing multiple to be placed on top of each-other. To compensate, exclude these "stacking Runes" from Enhanced Mending specs so that the buffed version of this Adv can't be used to endlessly maintain a half a dozen runes at once.
- Particle Cannon
Okay, so, I can't find any other mention of "Particle Cannon" throughout the entire thread. And I haven't been keeping track of every single new power added and their base damage numbers either. So I'm going to just assume this is referring to Plasma Cannon instead! So!
- Plasma Cannon
Neat change I suppose! Though it still suffers from the same core issues I've talked about ad nauseam, insofar as it physically cannot be used to consistently maintain Plasma Burn and Disintegrate on its own, which makes it a dead power outside of explicitly taking it for DPS check scenarios, of which we have a grand total of, like, one. (Teleiosaurus continues to be the dumbest piece of content in the game!) But. About that bug you can't repro with it, uh... I repro'd it in, like, five seconds of testing with the following.
Bug: Plasma Cannon isn't proccing Technological Prowess or Technological Enhancement stacks on full charge/initial use. Tested at R1, wearing Nemesis/Catalyst Heirlooms, Int/Rec/End with no Slotted Passive and no specs. It is proccing stacks on finishing its cooldown, but the initial full-charge is not proccing stacks, unlike other Technology powers, which can cause DPSes relying on Technological Prowess to run out of energy at an inopportune time. (Mostly the Fissile.)
The fact that the forums refuse to tell you how close you are to the character/post size limit until you attempt to post something that happens to be too big- and the automated spam filter will immediately completely lock you out of posting long-term if you attempt to post or edit posts too close to the character limit- is genuine agony.
Bug
Avenger Mastery is causing the tooltip for Laser Eyes and Particle Blaster to only display up to a 62% chance to apply Plasma Burn, but the actual chance seems to remain 100%
By extension, I checked Infernal Blast and it has the same issue. This is relatively minor so long as the actual chance is still 100%, but in the unlikely case that I was just extremely lucky and rolled that 62% chance across 30 different trials, it could be an issue.
I'd like to see some synergy between Eye Lasers and Might. Something like Chest Beam, where it applies Burn Through and can do knockback would be great. While Eye Beams from the Power Armor framework can apply Burn Through, it locks out all other powers while being used, making it a poor choice outside of PA.
Suggestion
Make Eye Laser apply Burn Through rather than Disintegrate
Give Eye Laser knockback either inherently or through an advantage
Or maybe just create an ultimate version of Eye Beam:
Suggestion
Ultimate Eye Beam Power
A maintain that deals damage in a cone and applies Overpower
Has access to the Commanding Presence advantage
__________________________________________________
The poster formerly known as Lightwave!
Suggestion:
Give On-Next-Hit powers more useful ADVs
Considering this change killed stacking ONH powers and encouraging only using one and taking into consideration their LONG Cooldowns, It's fair to give them more useful AOE Debuff ADVs to the powers for being more desirable for using it only for the ADVs and not Rank 3
Suggestion:
Give [Sonic Device] Deafening Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Toxic Nanites] Debilitating Poison Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Radiation Poisoning] Disintegration Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Miniaturization Drive] Demolished Debuff ADV
Pretend Demolish makes sense for Miniaturization Drive because by shrinking the enemies you made them so small you can crush them! It makes sense in context
Suggestion:
Give On-Next-Hit powers 1 Point DOWNLOAD ADV
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 synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
Preparation: Now provides Defense based on your secondary superstats.
Enlightened: Now provides healing bonus based on how much cooldown reduction you have from gear.
Revitalize: Increased amount per rank to 3%, reduces total ranks to 2.
Tactician: Increased totals ranks to 3.
Mastery: Increased max energy to +30.
OOOOOOOOOH! I love this
Preparation now is even more Desirable
I'm not forced to pick 3/3 Revitalize (again... who uses Energy Builders in endgame?)
3/3 Tactician became more useful
and having access to Healing Bonus with Enlightened is super
Powers
Added Download advantage to various Gadgeteering powers
Thank you
Please consider in the future giving more MYSTIC Family powers access to Mystified Buff as well
This is not relevant to the current Framework rework but still, Mystified is underwhelming and underutilized
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 synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
New Adv (2): Creates a random Healing Rune one your primary target when fully charged.
You weren't kidding, those Healing Runes are indeed Random
Suggestion:
Can we have Experimental Burst Ray actually have its own RUNE that fits the Technology powerframe?
Seeing Mystic Runes on a gadget power is kinda narly
The Visuals from the Medical Arrow's Rune fits it perfectly
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 synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
No longer applies a generic damage debuff, instead, now applies Disorient to affected targets. This effect scales with rank.
Reciprocating Gizmo Adv: Removed the generic damage and speed buff. Now applies 3 stacks of Charged Up.
and since I mentioned it earlier
YEAH... This change is straight up awful and makes this power aweful!
Have fun getting your Rank 3 Mini Device Disoriented replaced by your generic Disoriented from your other powers (Miniaturization Device being primary popular with the BRICK Family which has plenty innate access to Disoriented) 🙄
along with getting a lousy movement boost with the Gizmo Adv
Dead on arrival power change and I'm surprised not many players are vocal about it!
Despite being a "Problematic" power that caused issue in the past
In my opinion Miniaturization Device Generic damage Debuff should stay
and Reciprocating Gizmo should get you 3 Stacks of Furious along with the 3 stacks of Charged Up
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 synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
Bug
Strafing Run ranks 2 and 3 do not trigger at your target, and instead targets yourself. The Pyre Patch spawned by this will also appear on you, but with Chemical Fire selected, the patch will spawn on the target, despite the damage still being located at you.
Also worth noting that at certain angles, the visual of the jet flying over will go over you instead of the target even with a rank 1 that actually works. Basically, at R2 and R3, Strafing Run is acting like a PBAoE instead of a targeted AoE.
Bug
Nuclear Fallout does not count properly to Ultimate Orbital Cannon's damage scaling for the purposes of using "four adv points" for maximum damage.
Suggestion
Very late in the day to be suggesting but...could Storm Cloud get a 2 point 10/10/10 debuff advantage vs Crushing/Cold/Elec? Would have to be something new like:
+ Applies Eye of the Storm/Storm Surge to affected targets, which reduces resistance to Cold, Crushing and Electrical damage for a while. (-10/-10/-10% for 15 seconds)
Suggestion
Set the Download advantages on the Gadgeteering Powers to 1point advantages. That's what they are on other powers like Straight Shot or Medical Arrow.
Intelligence Spec Tree
Preparation: Now provides Defense based on your secondary superstats.
Enlightened: Now provides healing bonus based on how much cooldown reduction you have from gear.
Revitalize: Increased amount per rank to 3%, reduces total ranks to 2.
Tactician: Increased totals ranks to 3.
Mastery: Increased max energy to +30.
About the Intelligence tree changes; I think Enlightened is so strong that it ruins using other primary stats as healer instead of being a variety. My recent tests on PTS showed me that the healing bonus amount you can get from Enlightened can scale up to +%154 healing bonus (Its the highest healing bonus you can get in the game). That might result in a situation people only consider using Intelligence primary and stacking full presence, also stacking perfect with secondary stat bonuses of Intelligence's traits (Preparation and Tactician) which i also considered making it overpowered compared to Presence tree. I would prefer it to be another variety for Intelligence based gadget healing powers, not the best option that overwhelms Presence tree. So I have a suggestion.
Suggestion: Make Enlightened Intelligence scaling instead of cooldown reduction so it can make up healing bonus lose from not having Presence and can work with new healing form better.
Suggestion: Make Enlightened Intelligence scaling instead of cooldown reduction so it can make up healing bonus lose from not having Presence and can work with new healing form better.
Thinking about it, and, absolutely seconded. Not because current Cooldown Reduction stacking gives "too much healing" or something, but because in its current state it strongarms Intelligence healers into going for pure cooldown reduction if they want to "do it right," and because the current changes to Intelligence are forcing it to lean very hard into SSS stacking exclusively, which... yuck, yeah, let me play a healer that isn't identical to the last nine "one single-target heal, one AoE heal, Pre-stacked and nothing but survival utilities on the side" builds. (Giving Int another reason to PSS stack and giving it more compatibility with the new Int-scaling healer toggleform would be more interesting, and I'm going to be brutally honest: Int does not need specs that reward intentionally stacking Cooldown Reduction or Cost Discount since Int gives massive amounts of both already.)
The fact that the forums refuse to tell you how close you are to the character/post size limit until you attempt to post something that happens to be too big- and the automated spam filter will immediately completely lock you out of posting long-term if you attempt to post or edit posts too close to the character limit- is genuine agony.
Hello, I would like to add it here on my understanding is that Intelligence Primary suppose to be a 'Well rounded Spec', Since the current state of Intelligence primary is being used widely in DPS (due to cosmics high resistance and rariness of Depleteed Uranium core drop rate), and a candidate for Crowded Controller already with 'Battle of Wits' in addition to Presence's Dominion.
The changes regarding Intelligence Spec tree that could provided its potential for Tanking, that would be perfect, however it would impose the unbalance for healing as for the following reasons. So do with Specialization re-positioning.
First I would like to quote the recent changes
Intelligence Spec tree
Preparation: Now provides Defense based on your secondary superstats.
Enlightened: Now provides healing bonus based on how much cooldown reduction you have from gear.
Revitalize: Increased amount per rank to 3%, reduces total ranks to 2.
Tactician: Increased totals ranks to 3.
Mastery: Increased max energy to +30.
and the prior
Intelligence Specializations
Swapped Revitalize and Enlightened spec locations.
Since within Tier 2 Intelligence specs already has 'Expertise' to buff secondary super stats the new enlightened on tier 2 would impose a strong bonus healing that could go beyond 100% on end game gears alone. Yet plus with +20% Bonus healing from secondary Presence would go beyond control.
The buff from that Expertise currently provided should be enough for the well rounded.
Secondly, with the new toggle supportive form 'Technological Advancement' this could go beyond under control, whilst many Auras or support passive in the game are scaling with Presence, (Except Inertial Dampening Field) to buff allies, Intelligence in my point of view should not involve any further in bonus healing to leave Presence stay on the flag for that. However, in the future, I wish there might be a considering revamp or 'less offensive' Primary super stats such as Recovery, Endurance (and even Constitution) to be more capable of candidate healing and tanking instead, since we are also have toggle forms that are scaling with them (e.g. Fear consumption, Smouldering for Recovery, and Vital Shielding for Endurance).
Third, the relocation between Revitalize and Enlightened, is understandable due to the following moves of 'Enlightened' 's current reworking, but as per said on the above, I wish you could reconsidering both reworking and repositioning them.
Hence my suggestions regarding the Specialization changes.
Suggestion:
1. Keep Revitalise and Enlightened on the same positions as the old one, with Enlightened spec characteristic remain as the old one as well, in boosting non-super stats, but Enlightened's rank could be reduced to max at max at R2 in responses to the current's Preparation and Tactician changes.
2. If you are still considering of adding bonus healing to Intelligence spec tree, please consider to divert Enlightened's current approach to Revitalized instead, but reduce the scaling from cooldown reduction on gears to be on secondary super stats with a cap on 20-25% bonus healing. Since Revaltalize that stay on Teir 2 specs, could be an option for supportive Intelligence, in sacrificing Detect vulnerability because of the 5 spec points limitation. Also with the reworked Preparation a tank could also utilise extra bonus healing from my proposed Revitalize on Tier 2 specs (which they possibly also pick Tinkering in tanking).
If my proposition on Revitalised reworking being relocated to tier 1, there is a possibility that people could take both Revitalize and Detect Vulnerability, to prevent this thats why I have proposed to not relocate them at all.
Or in this case if you do not want to divert current Enlightened approach, you could keep Revitalise on the current approach, as same as the old one, and keep the same position on Tier 2 as on my number 1 spec suggestion.
3. Intelligence Mastery could stay as it was, but could get a buff with +15 max energy in addition to adding non-super stats.
Additionally, about power changes, I have noticed some very convincing approach on Gadgeteering, esspacially for debuff application methods, specifically Particle damage debuff Disintegrate, but I found none of them apply 'Burn through' which is understandable because they are all dealing particle damage. Even though it would be nice to have one of them, here are my suggestions regarding the power which might not be on focus but hope you are considering.
Suggestion:
1. Might's Onslaught power: Nuclear Shockwave's Nuclear Fallout Advantage applies 'Burn Through' instead of disintegrate. since the power is already dealing both particle and crushing damage.
2. Also if possible, New Power: Eye lasers add 'Burn Through' advantage.
New Power: Eye lasers
Tier 0 Laser Sword
Blast
100ft
Deals Particle damage and has a chance to apply Plasma Burn.
Damage is considered melee damage at close range, and ranged at long range.
Adv (2): Applies Disintegrate on full charge.
Adv (2): Spreads your Plasma Burn and Disintegrate effects to nearby targets.
Adv (2): Stuns your target on full charge.
Hope you will consider,
best regards
Apologies if double commenting, my previous comment does not seems to show
About the Intelligence tree changes; I think Enlightened is so strong that it ruins using other primary stats as healer instead of being a variety. My recent tests on PTS showed me that the healing bonus amount you can get from Enlightened can scale up to +%154 healing bonus (Its the highest healing bonus you can get in the game). That might result in a situation people only consider using Intelligence primary and stacking full presence, also stacking perfect with secondary stat bonuses of Intelligence's traits (Preparation and Tactician) which i also considered making it overpowered compared to Presence tree. I would prefer it to be another variety for Intelligence based gadget healing powers, not the best option that overwhelms Presence tree. So I have a suggestion.
Suggestion: Make Enlightened Intelligence scaling instead of cooldown reduction so it can make up healing bonus lose from not having Presence and can work with new healing form better.
I suspect the way the tooltip was reading out on Repurpose was obfuscating how high a value you can get on it. Repurpose and Enlightened are using the same scaling, (just with different stats), and you can currently get Repurpose quite a lot higher as there are more outlets for gear Offense bonuses.
I'm not against toning down Enlightened, but this may be a case where both specs may need to be toned down.
I made a little spreadsheet to compare different values that are relevant to a healer across various superstat choices. Cosmic gear and Cosmic Presence used for all primary stats except for PRE primary. PRE primary is using OV gear. I only looked at things that were obvious and gear wasn't optimized, so what you see here is not fully comprehensive of the capabilities of each primary stat.
Looking at healing value alone, which seems to be the cause of calls for nerf, I don't see it to be so overperforming. While INT primary may have a higher healing value compared to any other superstat tree, overhealing is generally valueless to team play. You get more team play value in REC primary due to reduced cooldowns or in PRE primary due to stronger AoPM value and strong CC and resistance debuffing. INT primary has no other particularly unique properties for a healer (stacking PRE, you don't get much value from Battle of Wits), so high healing value ends up as INT primary's only unique property. (Edit: You do get some CC value from Expertise though.)
What I do see as a potential problem though is in the case of a healer that is INT/CON. INT/CON healer can become both very durable and have very high healing value. (Side note: Both of these would also be very strong for a tank role as well, but I would argue that it is fine as this kind of tank would lack offensive value which is not desirable in endgame content.)
Suggestion
Swap the positions of Preparation and Tinkering specializations in INT primary tree.
This swap makes it so that you can't simply pick both Preparation and Expertise which lowers the overall max health gain and healing that an INT/CON/PRE build would have.
Edit: Or don't change anything. It doesn't really need a nerf. I thought about it more and the spec swap has some niche undesirable consequences on some other builds that already don't perform so well.
Edit2: Realized my modding for PRE primary didn't match the modding of the other trees.
About the Intelligence tree changes; I think Enlightened is so strong that it ruins using other primary stats as healer instead of being a variety. My recent tests on PTS showed me that the healing bonus amount you can get from Enlightened can scale up to +%154 healing bonus (Its the highest healing bonus you can get in the game). That might result in a situation people only consider using Intelligence primary and stacking full presence, also stacking perfect with secondary stat bonuses of Intelligence's traits (Preparation and Tactician) which i also considered making it overpowered compared to Presence tree. I would prefer it to be another variety for Intelligence based gadget healing powers, not the best option that overwhelms Presence tree. So I have a suggestion.
Suggestion: Make Enlightened Intelligence scaling instead of cooldown reduction so it can make up healing bonus lose from not having Presence and can work with new healing form better.
I suspect the way the tooltip was reading out on Repurpose was obfuscating how high a value you can get on it. Repurpose and Enlightened are using the same scaling, (just with different stats), and you can currently get Repurpose quite a lot higher as there are more outlets for gear Offense bonuses.
I'm not against toning down Enlightened, but this may be a case where both specs may need to be toned down.
Im actually Repurpose user with Justice+OV(sniper glove) gear sets and i can only get +%104(347.03) healing bonus from it. Also using Justice+OV(sniper) makes me a bit vulnurable because i can't acces other endgame gear sets bonuses. But with the Intelligence case, cooldown reduction stat is much more easier to gain, and you don't sacrifice anything to gain it. So IMO this makes it broken.
For the Detonator Switch power, please consider that the Attack Toy replicated/cloned toys take time to spawn while also having lower health than the original Attack Toy. To get the full damage potential from Detonator Switch, your replicated toys need extra time to spawn, one at a time, and to survive until all four replicated toys spawn. This puts both a sizable delay on using Detonator Switch with additional constraints on whether or not the toys survive for all 5 to be available to detonate. For those reasons, I propose the original Attack Toy and clones all detonate at the same, higher damage instead of reduced damage for each replicated/cloned toy.
Suggestion: For Detonator Switch, please consider making the Attack Toy Replicated/Clone Toy detonation damage the same as the original Attack Toy and not reduced damage. [/quote]
Both of these specs now have diminishing returns on scaling and have had their scaling reduced overall. They scale normally up until 36%, then use a significant diminished scaling.
This is a poorly thought out nerf based on extreme edge cases. Curious as to how this affected actual characters, I decided to compare my Mind AT between PTS and live. Using live gear rather than unrealistic tuned PTS setups, I have:
Mind AT (3/3 Repurpose, 347.5 offense):
Empathic Healing (PTS) : 774-2326
Empathic Healing (Live) : 851-2557
This is roughly a 10% heal power loss for nothing. I don't think anyone thought Mind AT healed too much, or that Empathic Healing needed a nerf. Other PSS ATs such as Radiant, Witch, and Blazing are also affected by this. AT healers are already weaker than FF healers, and to be further weakened like this is simply unreasonable.
Bug - Guardian Specialization: Make it Count
The specialization applies on the Damage Strength layer rather than the Base Damage layer, resulting in a ~1% actual effect.
I think we're at the point where I can't raise any genuine complaints other than that Intelligence still needs something else to scale off Int stacking to make Int-stacking Int instead of secondary-stacking Int more valid than "just take 300/350 Int and then stack the rest into Dex, dude, that's the only reason Int Prime exists now." If I had to raise any specific complaint beyond that, it'd probably be that Repurposed/Enlightened doesn't need DR whatsoever? I stand by my point that Enlightened should have simply scaled off Intelligence instead of Cooldown Reduction from gear, and believe that both were fine as they were without DR. The Lumi Slash tweak sounds nice, though admittedly I haven't tested it to make sure it's working as intended.
But.
Since we're now having specs from elsewhere other than Intelligence being looked at...
Suggestion: change Warden tree's "Upper Hand" to proc off all active defense debuffs applied by the player, similar to Onslaught Slicer gloves. Upper Hand used to do its job correctly before we got a whole slew of melee powers, PVDs and devices that deal differing damage typs and rely on debuffs that Upper Hand doesn't cover, like Bullet Ballet (Armor Piercing) / Brilliant Cleave and Therakiel's Blade (Devoid) / all three Imbued Gauntlets and Cloak of the Infinite Planes (Hexed) / Electric Vengeance and Thundering Claws (Superconductor) / Havoc Hammer (Deafening) / the Toxic TKBlade PVD family (Debilitating Poison) and more. Currently, Upper Hand's requirement of having one of a few specific debuffs that are often incompatible with these builds active for maximum damage results in unnecessary build clutter that "intended" melee setups like pure BCF/Haymaker/Annihilate/Massacre/Dragon Claws/Dragon Wrath/etcetera spam don't have to worry about.
Suggestion: change the "bonus damage" of Guardian's Make It Count from Additive layer (nearly nothing) to Base Damage. Blasts are mostly varying flavors of mid to begin with outside of builds using Avenger mastery to quick-fire a single Blast on occasion; there's no reason for Make It Count to be on the Additive layer.
Suggestion: change Ego's Sixth Sense from a 3/3 spec to a 2/2 spec while retaining the same scaling, to match Ego's other "3/2 split pairing" of Follow Through 3 + Exploit Opening 2, Strength's intended 3/2 split pairing of Overpower 3 + Brutality 2, Intelligence's intended 3/2 split of Detect Vulnerability 3 + Expertise 2, Dexterity's intended 3/2 split pairing of Deadly Aim 3 + Expose Weakness 2, and more. Currently, Sixth Sense is drastically outpaced by Exploit Opening in almost all situations, and Exploit Opening relies on having high crit severity and low crit to moderate chance to benefit the most, which makes secondary stacking (and Sixth Sense is for secondary stacking) almost always worse than just pure Ego stacking for Ego Prime. Flattening Sixth Sense to a 2/2 so it can pair with Follow Through better still wouldn't be better than Exploit Opening in most situations, but it would give a small and welcome bump to secondary stacking for Ego Prime builds.
Suggestion: change Recovery's Super Charged to instead give its 5%/10%/15% bonus at 65% or higher energy, and double this value at 90% or higher (10%/20%/30%) to function similarly to Luminescent Slash's End Of The Line Adv. A lot of ATs are saddled with having "no-damage infinite-energy" primaries, namely Recovery and Endurance (Intelligence is at least allowed to do damage.) Additionally, the easy energy that these primaries provide tend to newbie-trap less experienced players that think these are great primaries because they don't have to EB constantly when they have them, totally neglecting that their builds are bad and they wouldn't need these energy-heavy low-damage primaries if their builds were good in the first place. Since Intelligence has defpen, and now some rather frightening secondary scaling, I'd like to raise that Recovery should be allowed to put out obscene numbers of low-severity crits to compensate, to bump Recovery's usefulness a little bit more and put it in a similar camp to secondary-stacked Ego and even moreso secondary-stacked Intelligence for "the crits are tiny but boy is there a whole lot of them."
Suggestion: swap the locations of Endurance's Quick Recovery (2/2 on the bottom row) and Kickback (2/2 on the top row.) This is specifically to tie into my next three suggestions, and serves no purpose on their own since those are both kind-of useless specs (though Kickback is even more useless; you're NEVER EBing with an energy primary unless you did something horribly wrong.)
Suggestion: change the function of Endurance's Kickback to instead increase critical chance, critical severity and base direct damaging power costs when above 75% of max energy by 7.5% each at 1/2 and 15% each at 2/2. Endurance is all about having massive amounts of energy, and if used correctly, you will. However, Endurance doesn't actually have many good uses for all that energy. Outburst exists, but isn't enough on its own to justify passing up more effective mainstays like Strength, Ego, Dexterity or Intelligence. Consider this as something that'd help bring Endurance up to par with the rest.
Suggestion: change Endurance's Outburst to simply give its benefits when above 75% max energy instead of 90%. This is for the same reason as the above. Endurance needs an excuse as well as room to actually chew through that energy. Which leads into one last suggestion for Endurance.
Suggestion: change Endurance's Quick Recovery to instead cause the user to receive 10%/20% more energy from all sources (toggleforms, energy unlocks, consumables, friendly Onslaught Savior Gloves, etcetera.) Sticking to the theme of the second row usually being more about extra damage or healing output, both having survivability tools, and the first row being more utility-based; this is to help turn Endurance into a woodchipper. (And to provide, ideally, more means of using... certain openly-acknowledged-as-too-expensive abilities and PVDs like the Ghosthunter Phase Rifle, as well as give leveling builds more of a kick as well.)
Having said all of that, since other powers and things in general are being brought in for review:
Suggestion: reduce the activation and maintain costs of- and buff the Pull strength of- the U-MD Ghosthunter Phase Rifle PVD. Since Soul Vortex is getting its Pull buff to actually be passably useful, and Electro Magnet now exists as a counterpart to it, this PVD has no excuse for costing an obscene amount of energy when other PVDs have stronger raw damage, wider range, don't have their damage gimped if enemies aren't clustered together, and cost half the energy for all of that.
Suggestion: revisit other powers and advs that rely on a Pull to function, such as Ebon Rift, Quicksand, and Storm Summoner with the Magnetic Adv, and give them buffs as necessary. Even more apparent with powers like these that are designed explicitly to pull enemies in closer is the fact that Pulls are pretty fundamentally flawed due to how mobs rubberband at all times in this game. Go ahead, pop into the powerhouse on Live to look at these powers as they are with a server that has even a few dozen people on it, and you'll see that mobs being Pulled in will start walking faster and faster beyond how fast they should be able to run to ignore Pulls, sometimes even ignoring movement speed penalties entirely such as this video where jogging test dummies rubberband to ignore R3 Quicksand while being affected by R3 Ebon Sigils and R3 Earth Form AND A SNARE, for a total movement speed penalty of 24%+30%+100%+100%, for a total of 254% movement penalty, which should- to my admittedly limited knowledge- result in them only being able to move at somewhere around 28% of their base speed. This is a bonus point for Ghosthunter Phase Rifle needing a look-over as well. This is why anything involving Pulls always winds up having to be paired with the mobs wanting to get close to someone that happens to be pulling them in, otherwise they ignore everything and power-walk out of any number of Pulls and movement debuffs. It's why Whirlpool has its mandatory Root effect paired with it as well. Video seen below, recorded on Live:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hltZji3TbN4
Suggestion: change the "Lingering Darkness" Adv for Dimensional Collapse to instead make Dimensional Collapse apply Devoid in the first place, rather than only refreshing it and randomly re-refreshing it, forcing sub-optimal use of Dimensional Collapse to maintain Devoid or losing Devoid to optimally use Dimensional Collapse. The reason Hex of Suffering is good is because it applies Hexed when used, which makes it reliable and consistent. Devoid, however, is in a bad place as far as debuffs go, for no good reason. Consider also that most defense debuffs have an apply on tap, whether via devices (like Atomic Strike and Will of the Tiger Cub) or powers (like Chest Beam, Hurl, Frag Grenade, Incendiary Grenade, Particle Smash, Fire Snake, Hex of Suffering, Will-O' The Wisp and more.) Devoid is overdue for a tap-applier that doesn't force its user to play footsie with juggling the debuff and some secondary effect, or forcibly charging up a ranged attack for it (which may not actually be good when considering that melee Dimensional combos exist. Looking at you, Brilliant Cleave!)
Suggestion: revisit the Laser Shotgun PVD, and change Plasma Sheer into a buff applied directly to the player that increases Laser Shotgun's base damage by 10% stacking up to 5 times, instead of it being a debuff on targets. Additionally, increase the duration of Plasma Sheer up to 10 seconds to match similar effects such as Onslaught Glove bonuses, and instead cause Plasma Shear stacks to expire after dealing damage if Laser Shotgun is charged for more than 0.33 seconds (for a total of 1 second between charge and activation. Need I say more for this one? Laser Shotgun is almost great, it just suffers from Plasma Sheer being horribly thought out, and inverting Plasma Sheer's function to allow Laser Shotgun to be mixed with Particle debuff appliers as well as allowing it to be used as a sort of quasi buff-rupture would make it much more flexible without actually directly increasing the PVD's maximum potential damage output.
Suggestion: give Typhoon the same Focus Point adv that Force Cascade has. I feel like this one's obvious too, but since Force and Wind share the same problem of being the set where the dedicated "correct single target attack" happens to just be "the AoE that hits the hardest," giving it Focus Point would just be pleasant and useful for purist Wind builds who would then have a more valid excuse to use Typhoon and Hurricane together.
Suggestion: revisit various slotted passives that have "apply set-related debuff when taking damage" effects, namely Fiery Form and Hearth with Clinging Flames, Ice Form with Chill and the likes, and give them a small chance to also apply these set-related debuffs when dealing damage, similar to Radiation Suit. No real thoughts to add to this one, just "good for parity, and better than nothing for Fiery Form given how generally bad it is since Fiery Light got turned into Additive rather than Base damage."
The fact that the forums refuse to tell you how close you are to the character/post size limit until you attempt to post something that happens to be too big- and the automated spam filter will immediately completely lock you out of posting long-term if you attempt to post or edit posts too close to the character limit- is genuine agony.
Comments
Intelligence: the nerf to Detect Vulnerability was already more than enough in the first place, and really Ego should have been buffed instead, but now it's been nerfed an extra 2% down? To cap at around 38% instead of around 40%, for... some reason? And Enlightened has been bumped to the top row of Int specs, leaving literally not enough things on the bottom row to take as a DPS for a DPS primary in the first place? Consider this: on Live, where Intelligence still isn't nerfed, the only reason Intelligence performs as well as Ego is due to the extremely high defpen being able to just barely reach 60%. If you want Intelligence to be "more balanced" then the nerf to 40% just in and of itself would be more than enough to insure Ego maintains superiority against low-Def% targets while Intelligence maintains superiority against high-Def% targets. Swapping Revitalized and Enlightened as-is is incredibly stupid. To that end, I have several... suggestions (in the "keeping Intelligence useful rather than turning it into the worthless slop that Rec-prime and End-prime are" vein of things) to make.
Suggestion: revert Detect Vulnerability from its current ~38% cap to the prior ~40% cap. Do I really need to explain why flat numbers are more appealing, and why Detect Vulnerability doesn't need to be kicked while it's already down?
Suggestion: merge Enlightened and Expertise into one singular 2-point spec that increases the base bonuses of both SSSes and all non-Superstats by 10%/20%. This would free up the top row of Intelligence specs that slightest bit more for the following two suggestions...
Suggestion: change Enlightened to instead provide a large Critical Chance bonus based on Secondary Superstats. This would enable Intelligence to take on an alternative playstyle in which it stacks a SSS instead of Intelligence, similar to how Str-prime Dex stacking, Ego-prime Dex-stacking and Dex-prime Ego-stacking or Dex-prime Str-stacking are all valid off-meta choices. This would entail barely getting any use out of Detect Vulnerability, but then, that's the idea: opening up a new playstyle without hinging on Detect Vulnerability, which was and still is the ONLY reason to use Int-prime as it currently is.
Suggestion: change/replace Revitalize with a spec that provides a small Critical Severity bonus based on Secondary Superstats. Nobody ever uses their Energy Builder ever unless they're forced to, which is relegated almost exclusively to poorly-built ATs, poorly-built FFs, and some leveling builds. This change would further reinforce the idea provided with the Enlightened change of building around Secondary Superstats as an alternative higher-chance-and-sev lower-defpen alternative to pure Int stacking.
Now with all that in mind, the change to Intelligence Mastery is a nice one, but I have something better in mind since, and I'm going to be honest, stacking a Superstat and giving extra energy on its own isn't exactly impressive. In fact, arguably, if you're running Intelligence as a primary, more Intelligence is what you need the least. It reads pretty clearly that this is mostly just to help The Fissile be quasi-functional as an AT (though even in its current state it struggles horribly with max energy.) So...
Suggestion: change Intelligence Mastery to the following: a 1.25x multiplier to both Energy Equilibrium and Maximum Energy and a 25% bonus to cooldown reduction of all non-Ultimate powers. This is to give Intelligence Mastery more energy flexibility without directly stacking up even more damage (since you're- as it is now- guaranteed to be stacking an Int toggleform if you're running Intelligence primary) as well as giving it some of Intelligence Primary's strength in situations where you're not actively stacking Intelligence, which would matter more if taking the suggestions provided above to allow Intelligence to function for both PSS-stacking and SSS-stacking builds.
There's so, so much that can be done with Intelligence Primary. Let's not nerf it into the dirt because "energy-stat primaries need to be dogwater." In fact, I'd love to see Rec Prime and End Prime buffed in the future, but that's not the focus here. Moving on...
Cosmic Gear: I have nothing meaningful to suggest here. Just a "thank GOD this bug's finally been fixed." Because Cosmic Presence utterly neutered combo DPSes in any content where the two were brought together. It was genuinely awful. It also nerfed other DPSes as well because of this same bug. I'll be happy to see this fix hit Live.
Flamethrower: Same as the above. Nothing really noteworthy to say about the changes here, whether to the base power or to the Spitfire adv. It's a microscopic buff that doesn't really mean much of anything in the long run, but that also means this isn't going to make anyone scream and cry about being outparsed by 0.05% by a Flamethrower build or anything.
Fire Breath: Same as the above once again, though with the exception of highlighting that Chemical Burn changing the damage type to Particle in and of itself is absolutely welcome and benefits mixing this with more Particle-heavy builds and Plasma Burn rupturing builds more.
Accelerated Metabolism: Neat I guess? Accel Metab is still hot garbage though, since a minute chance to proc an incredibly miniscule amount of energy once every (X) seconds will always be near-pointless. Consider:
Suggestion: change Accelerated Metabolism to instead reduce the base energy cost of any power it's taken on by 10%. (Read alternatively: it applies a 0.9x multiplier to the energy costs of the power in choice.) This would, uh, make Accelerated Metabolism actually useful, and the kind of thing some more finnicky builds might actually benefit from, even if most builds won't have energy problems in the first place without this Adv.
On-Next-Hit: Admittedly I've never cared to use multiple On-Next-Hits together so I wouldn't be able to reasonably give feedback on this even if I had any. Still, a cooldown reduction is always welcome in a game that obsesses over timing.
Bionic Shielding: Aaand it's ruined. (Okay, not literally, but we just came off the back of unnecessary cooldowns being reduced. Why are we giving Bionic Shielding a second cooldown on top of the existing 15-second-cooldown on each target?) The primary purpose of Bionic Shielding was to quickly feed a backload of healing to several teammates in anticipation of a wave of incoming damage, commonly add-waves in lairs and alerts, but this essentially limits it to only being used for one person at a time, which... great for score-farming Cosmic tanks I guess? Not nearly as good everywhere else. And by everywhere else, I mostly mean babysitting DPS squishies that seem intent on sticking a fork in the nearest electrical outlet as aggressively as humanly possible. Mind you, Bionic Shielding is never and was never a requirement for healing, but... seriously? Technically still usable for a 5-man team, but that means stopping every 3 seconds on the dot to apply Bionic Shielding to someone, which, from personal experience, isn't fun unless it's part of a specific rotation. And "oh god they're all dying and I'm next" is not part of a specific rotation.
Suggestion (A): revert Bionic Shielding to its prior state. Since the current change to it feels like obvious Technological Advancements fodder, just consider making it stack Technological Advancements by default/immediately on application anyways, or, since healers almost never have energy issues, simply... not bother with that? And just let healers stack Technological Advancements through other means. There's nothing wrong with this.
Suggestion (B): change Bionic Shielding from an effective "on next hit heal" to a true HoT. Make it proc its healing once every 3 seconds (at the 0/3/6/9/12/15 second mark) no matter what for six ticks total.
Either of these would be applicable, and I would greatly prefer the former (reverting Bionic SHielding to its prior, already fine and functional state) I can see the benefits of the latter. Having said that...
Suggestion: give Bionic Shielding a 2-point adv that provides a bonus 33% Def% to any target affected by it. NOTE: this wouldn't expire when Bionic Shielding's healing expires, instead only expiring when Bionic Tampering expires/when 15 seconds is up.
Suggestion: give Bionic Shielding a matching 2-point adv that provides 3.3% Energy Regeneration to any target affected by it. Just like the above, it would last for the duration of Bionic Tampering/a full 15 seconds, rather than expiring whenever Bionic Shielding's healing is consumed.
If we're going to push into the territory of making Bionic Shielding gimmicky so that it feeds Technological Advancements, then lets take it all the way and take notes from other Technology powers. (Namely Medical Beam and Power Conversion for the two above suggestions.)
Plasma Cannon: Nice I suppose? I mean, don't get me wrong, bugfixes are good. The problem is, bugfixes or no, this power is still completely unable to consistently refresh Plasma Burns and Disintegrate. Oh, mind you, it hits hard, which is nice, especially for situations like Teleiosaurus DPS checks, but I'm not taking a power for one specific situation unless that specific situation is death and I am a healer. Plasma Cannon does not fix death and is not a healer power, so... yeah.
Suggestion: I keep saying it. Plasma Cannon needs a shorter cooldown, enough to be usable (within) once every 15 seconds. Otherwise, why take it when there are now other much better and easier options for maintaining a full 5 stacks of Plasma Burn? (The answer just to pass mama dino's DPS checks, which, again, using it for one specific situation and nowhere else?...
Resurrection Serum: Contrasting the bad change to Bionic Shielding for the sake of forcing it to benefit the new technology healer toggleform, this change to Resurrection Serum to force it to benefit the new technology healer toggleform is a good one. The reduction of cooldown from 15 seconds to 3 is huge for actually being able to use this rez in a situation where lots of people are dying rapidly, I.E. open content, and the new Adv to give it more parity with other rez-others by letting it rez multiple people at once is also a welcome QoL increase. Yeah, needless to say, I like this change.
Experimental Burst Ray: This is a tiny DPS buff but only if Overcharging, which is incredibly risky if you're using Experimental Burst Ray as an AoE. So, no real strong thoughts or feelings either way? An increase from 50% to 60% maximum Overcharge damage is nice, though it doesn't quite compare to the old 100% of Live/pre-rework Experimental Burst Ray. Though this does lead me to a thought:
Suggestion: give Experimental Burst Ray a new 2-point Adv, "Prototype Stability Module" or something to that effect, that removes the ability to Overcharge entirely and increases damage by 40% instead of an extra rank's 20%.
Attack Toys: I really need to use more controllable pets, I used to use these a LOT in years past and would have more meaningful feedback than I do now. As it is now, though? Yeah. Yes please to any fixes that make pets commit self-delete by voluntary fall damage less often.
Detonator Switch: Same as the above. I rarely use controllable pets, or pets in general, so I can't say anything about this. My only lament is; who's using controllable pets when practically anything tougher than a Grab Alert has fifteen pet nukes built into it that won't let you even consistently spawn pets to use Detonator Swtich with?
Strafing Run: As near as I can figure, this is a good change. It still hits hard enough to justify being used, and it being placed automatically on the primary target means it's now usable on targets that aren't on the ground, and usable period in environments like underwater fights and flying fights where you just couldn't do squat with it before. The increase in AoE size is nice as well, as is the Adv to change its damage type to Particle, though considering that unlike certain other damage-type-changing Advs this comes with no other effect (and Fire damage is arguably """better""" than Particle due to more defpen debuffs being available for it, said Adv feels... eh. Not as good as it could be. With that in mind...)
Suggestion (A): reduce Chemical Fire Adv to 0-point cost from 1-point, since Chemical Fire doesn't provide any bonus secondary effects to Strafing Run. Or alternatively...
Suggestion (B): remove Chemical Fire Adv entirely and instead make "Particle Strafing Run" a completely new power in and of itself.
Pulse Beam Rifle: Bonus Critical Severity is nice, but the core problem with the current iteration of Pulse Beam Rifle stands: its energy cost is around 1.5x that of Assault Rifle's for dealing equivalent damage. (On a completely blank character, Assault Rifle is 39/0.67sec activation + 15/0.5sec maintain for 4.67sec max while Pulse Beam Rifle is 27/0.5sec activation + 27/0.5sec maintain for 4.5sec max, for a total of 159 energy per 4.67sec for Assault Rifle (~34/sec base) and 243 energy per 4.5sec for Pulse Beam Rifle (54/sec base.) Of note, Sonic Beam- the other "max-tier single-target DPS power" for Gadgeteering- is cheaper than Assault Rifle. Additionally, both of these have Advs that further increase their base damage when combined with a passive secondary effect that also increases their damage, unlike Pulse Beam Rifle which just has R3.) Read all that and tell me Pulse Beam Rifle needs to cost 1.5x more than powers with Advs that boost their damage above it. (And that's to say nothing about Rapid Shots likewise being cheaper and having more output than Pulse Beam Rifle.) So!
Suggestion: REDUCE PULSE BEAM RIFLE'S ENERGY COST. There is no mathematical reason for it to have as high a cost as it has. It costs 1.5x that of its counterparts (Assault Rifle, Sonic beam, Rapid Shots) while doing comparable at-rank damage in a vacuum but lower damage when allowing for Advs and synergies with other powers and effects.
Suggestion: give Pulse Beam Rifle an adv that makes it do 30% bonus damage (and have a bonus 10% critical chance and severity) against targets affected by Disintegrate.
Technological Prowess: Oh thank god. The change to allow this toggleform to proc off full Technology charges and full Technology maintains in particular targets this towards the Technology sets while in that same stead also allowing it to actually function independently of Molecular Self-Assembly. What more do I say? What more can I say? This- along with the current change to Intelligence Mastery- allows The Fissile to actually quasi-function where it just flat-out couldn't before, and overall provides an alternative for anyone who doesn't want to use the usual ego-stacking, dex-stacking and int-stacking "procs on half-charge and half-maintain or constantly at a distance" toggleforms. As it is now, I can't think of anything else I would suggest for this.
Experimental Blaster: No real solid thoughts here, just the usual "bugfixes are good, I like being able to play the game." What more is there to say?
Plasma Radiation: Oooooh boy! I have some thoughts about this one and I can't wait to share them! So, first things first, this appears to be a Particle damage Flamethrower expy, which lends validity to my prior suggestion for Particle Strafing Run being its own power. Having said that, what immediately stands out is that Plasma Radiation deals slightly less damage than Flamethrower does and has a smaller energy cost, while having an identical AoE size. With its advs for refreshing both Plasma Burns and Disintegrates consistently, it seems to trade damage for utility, which is further exemplified by it having the gimmick-y "more damage but stops working randomly" Adv instead of Flamethrower's Single Minded. With that in mind, my lament is that something that looks like it should deal high damage is being relegated to utility, similar to Flamethrower but more pronounced. To that end, I have suggestions for this one.
Suggestion: increase Plasma Radiation's damage and energy cost to match Flamethrower's. It's fine hitting a tiny bit harder and costing a tiny bit more, honestly; its strong utility still stands either way and isn't overshadowed if you make it hit a miniscule fraction more.
Suggestion: give Plasma Radiation the same 50% Single Minded Adv that Flamethrower has. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: the option to lean fully into the DPS aspect of things and use it as a middling-damage ramp-up instead of a low-damage utility. Of course, you can only do one or the other, not both, which leads me into...
Suggestion: give both Plasma Radiation and Flamethrower another Adv; this one increasing base damage by 50% straight out the gate but narrowing the AoE from 30* to 15*, effectively turning these into quasi-cylinders bordering on faux-single-target. This would allow both to take on a similar role to something like Force Cascade, if noticeably weaker: the option to be used for sweeping groups of mobs or to be used for focused fire on singular heavy targets.
With that said the first two of these suggestions I absolutely insist on while the last one is more a matter of build flexibility. I have noticed that the current iteration of the Fissile is restricted to Plasma Radiation as its dedicated AoE, and giving it essentially a weaker Flamethrower just seems... iffy. At least something like the Soldier has a particular Submachinegun Burst PVD that costs way too much (it needs to be fixed, but I digress) to make up for its dedicated AoE. If Plasma Radiation is going to be forced to be a dedicated AoE for an AT then I feel it should be able to actually stand on its own, assuming it doesn't get a PVD that's still compatible with Energy damage. To that end, please consider the damage and energy cost increase to match Flamethrower and please consider giving it the same 50% Single Minded Adv that its Fire cousin has.
Technological Advancements: I don't feel strongly either way about this new one. It's another healer toggleform that doesn't directly reward you for healing but instead for doing something unrelated to keeping your allies alive that in turn helps you, well, keep them alive harder. Just like Fear Consumption, I imagine this probably won't be used all that often outside of people intentionally avoiding the generic Meta Thing(tm) but at the very least it is another option that works on a technical level. My only complaint is certain... other powers (Bionic Shielding) being nerfed just to force them to work together with this Toggleform, when Technological Advancements could instead be... actually, you know what? I'm going to suggest that right now.
Suggestion: change Technological Advancements to proc whenever using any Technology power not tagged as a direct damaging attack, as well as whenever any Technology power comes off cooldown.
Energy Blaster: Neat! Nobody uses their EB unless absolutely forced to so this really doesn't matter, but as far as flavor/aesthetic goes (since nobody uses their EB unless forced to or unless their build is bad, EBs are pretty much only for aesthetic) more options are always welcome.
Particle Blaster: Alright, now we're getting somewhere! A faster (arguably in most cases better) alternative to Experimental Blaster for slapping Disintegrate on things both for our resident new AT and for builds that aren't using a device or the funny Grond punch for it. Of course, with that in mind, since we're leaning away from the RNG-y gimmicks and towards more general utility, I have a few suggestions for Particle Blaster here too.
Suggestion: add a 2-point Adv that makes Particle Blaster refresh all Plasma Burns on full charge. This seems like a pretty simple, basic no-brainer for a power like this.
Suggestion: change the Radioactive Decay Adv to instead turn particle Blaster into a 10ft sphere on the primary target. Advs for things like Disintegrate application would apply to all targets hit in this case, not just the primary target. Likewise, Plasma Burn application chance would remain 25%-100% on secondary targets as well.
Suggestion: add a 2-point Adv that makes Particle Blaster spawn a good old traditional Secondary Pyre Patch (the lower-damage 10 second variety) underneath the primary target on full charge.
Eye Lasers: It figures that we start getting powers that do variable ranged or melee damage depending on distance from the target, like, a month after I try to write a PVD thread suggesting several mixed melee+ranged PVDs only to wind up unable to post it because it was close to 4x the post size cap. That said, this feels somewhat out-of-place for the Laser Sword set as far as theme goes, though as far as utility goes it fills a similar role to Particle Blaster, which I highly appreciate. However, this... really does low damage. Which, for pure utility isn't a concern, but come on, this is the first (excluding a certain buggy Lance+Annihilation PVD that everyone loves but I haven't cared enough to use) power we have that's both melee and ranged depending on how you use it! Come on, let's show it a little more love than that!
(Minor) bug: Eye Lasers is categorized as a Ranged Area Attack in the powers menu despite being single-target and having no Advs that would make it an area attack of any kind.
Suggestion: make both melee and ranged Eye Lasers a 2ft cylinder. (Keep its damage output the same as it currently is. It already deals very low damage; there's no reason to make it deal less. A higher energy cost would be acceptable though.)
Suggestion: give Eye Lasers a 2-point Adv that increases its base damage on a target by 12% per stack of Plasma Burn.
Suggestion: give Eye Lasers a 2-point Adv that increases its base damage on a target by 60% if Disintegrate and/or Burn Through is present on the target.
The formermost suggestion is for the sake of overall utility and flexibility. The latter two, however, are for the sake of leaning hard into pure DPS with a power very clearly designed to look like it hits hard, being a not-Cyclops beam and all. (For what it matters, 1.6*1.6 melee Eye Lasers still wouldn't hit quite as hard as 1.2*1.35 Luminescent Slash, and even a no-adv 1.2*1.2 Luminescent Slash would hit slightly harder, which seems fine to me. In turn, Eye Beam's ranged version doing lower damage than its melee version by default should cover the intended disparity between melee and ranged damage just fine.)
All in all, I am not pleased with the needless extra nerfs to Intelligence because "Ego needs to be stronger" when Ego itself is lacking in the first place and should be buffed instead of nerfing Intelligence (if Strength and Dexterity are anything to go by,) while in turn most of the power changes do seem nice, and the new powers seem useful, if light on actual damage potential (though the added utility is always welcome.)
This is my cry for help
Suggestion
Give Pulse Beam Rifle a 30% base damage advantage
It hadn't occurred to me until I actually parsed the Fissile, but PBR is... astoundingly weak. Funnily enough, this was the same case as Rapid Shots years back where I was commenting that it desperately needs higher damage to be even close to the other options. An advantage to give it better base damage would be ideal, and it can be done with Disintegrate or Plasma Burn, much like its neighboring Sonic Beam has one for having Deafening on the target. If it's a balancing concern because of the Critical Strike/Severity thing, well, you could make an advantage to heavily increase the damage but remove the ramping effect. Rapid Shots lost its mobility for better damage, I'm sure losing a gimmick for damage would be just as well.
Plasma Cannon > Technological Prowess
Fully charging Plasma Cannon does not Stack Technological Prowess form.
I'm not able to repro this.
After a little testing, this might have been an opinion formed from the lens of the Fissile, as it does decently for a Freeform that has flexibility in their passive and stat choice. I'm still going to say it could use an advantage that removes its gimmick for more base damage, as I think it could be better, but one thing my testing did reveal outside of the Fissile... this thing guzzles energy way too hard and is difficult to synergize with an EU, as it wouldn't proc anything but Overdrive.
Suggestion
Reduce the maintain cost for Pulse Beam Rifle
The struggle to get this thing to work led me to using an out-of-set copout that I only use when an energy guarantee is needed, and boy would it clash so hard with any relevant themes. The activation cost is on point for other tier 3 maintains, but the fact it costs the exact same amount to maintain it will break a lot of builds trying to employ it. If this increases the activation cost, so be it, but the maintain definitely needs to be lower.
I am able to reproduce this bug. In the fissile AT, having its form at rank 1 and Plasma Cannon at rank 3, the form doesn't provide another stack of its buff.
Suggestion
Probability Inhibitor Chip (2 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of the power by 40%, but removes the ability to ramp-up Critical Strike and Severity.
This advantage could also reduce the amount of variance it has, but implementation in general would be nice to at least try. While this power can have high critical strikes, the variance makes it very unlikely to be consistently good, combined with the fact that this power relies on you fully maintaining to maximize potential in an environment that will repeatedly make you block or otherwise interrupt your maintains, there should be some consideration to an advantage like this, or simply bumping the base damage a little higher slash tightening the variance. Alternatively;
Plasma-Ignition Beam (1 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of this power by 2% per stack of Plasma Burn on the target
Or
Plasma-Ignition Beam (2 Point Advantage): Increases the base damage of this power by 10% per stack of Plasma Burn on the target, but removes the ability to ramp-up Critical Strike and Severity.
This would give more synergy to the rest of Gadgets, as it currently has no interaction, on top of giving PBR the damage boost it needs to be competitive with other options, as how it is currently leaves it as underperforming, especially in a non-test environment where fully maintaining isn't always possible. Please consider at least adding it to PTS for testing.
FC.31.20240621.20
The Ranged version of Eye Lasers do not have the Plasma Burn refresh effect.
Suggestion
Increase the damage of the Ranged version of Eye Lasers
Particle Blaster I understand why it won't be buffed, but there's a case for Eye Lasers here; specifically, the fact that when it turns to the melee power it becomes melee damage. This removes any sort of benefit from Role or Ego, causing the multi-power factor to be an actual detriment to the player. Bearing that in mind, it functions exactly the same as Infernal Blast: 100ft, self-rooting, applies a DoT, refreshes said DoT, with the only difference being that it gets weaker if you're in close range. Please consider bringing it in line, at least the Ranged damage version.
- Intelligence Spec Tree
Bug: Detect Vulnerability still erroneously hard-capping at 38% instead or 40%. (This reduction was not mentioned in patch notes where it happened and is such presumably a bug. Additionally, its soft cap of 30% appears to have dropped from 350 to 300.
Suggestion: change Revitalize to instead provide its cooldown reduction when dealing any direct damage or direct healing with any power. Once again, nobody is ever EBing with Intelligence as their Primary, or in general really, which means this is still a dead spec.
Alternate suggestion: replace Revitalize with a 2-rank spec that gives a small bonus to Critical Severity based on how high the user's Intelligence is. Now that we have two specs that scale with Intelligence/PSS and three specs that scale with SSSes, we still need to address that Intelligence has no means of gaining extra Crit Sev, which is more problematic now that Detect Vulnerability- which was supposed to be Intelligence's answer to its own lack of Crit Sev- is being nerfed.
Overall, the changes to Intelligence seem interesting, with much more of an emphasis on secondary-stacking now, especially with Detect Vulnerability soft-capped at 350, but then the lack of Critical Severity is still problematic, considering the nerf to Detect Vulnerability hinders Intelligence from doing its job: it's supposed to perform better against high-Def% bosses and worse against swarms of low-Def% mooks, opposing Ego performing worse against high-Def% bosses and better against swarms of low-Def% mooks. Shifting Intelligence from primarily PSS stacking to SSS stacking doesn't lend Intelligence the flexibility it deserves when its counterpart of Ego can PSS or SSS stack viably depending on the build. Dexterity has a similar if less severe problem of not scaling offensively with itself at all, contrasting Strength having plenty of flexibility for stacking PSS or SSSes, but I digress.
Another thought would be that the change to Enlightened, entertainingly, shoots AoPM in the foot for Intelligence builds yet paradoxically makes Intelligence more viable as a healer directly. Of course, since the "ideal" for DPSes, tanks and (some) healers now is Preparation 2/2 Tactician 3/3 on the bottom row, this isn't too drastic a loss, since the benefits of getting fed more of both SSSes will be more pronounced. (Of particular note to me is the trading of the effective 1.3x multiplier on HP from friendly AoPMs for a slight to moderate bump in defense, and this actually being the viable choice for non-tanks. Overall, I quite like this change! It's a bump in flexibility that Intelligence sorely needs, though it needs more still.)
Lastly, the buff of 10 max energy to Mastery is nice but ultimately still kind-of meaningless since Intelligence by nature will be drowning in energy at practically all times. Of particular note, though, is that this doesn't apply to some ATs with questionable design choices behind them. (Fissile for example NEEDS this bonus max energy since it doesn't have the correct choice of End instead of Rec as a SSS.) Which is why, in contrast, I have one rather wild suggestion to make Intelligence Mastery much more interesting without giving a boost in direct damage output.
Wild suggestion: change Intelligence Mastery to give a 20% bonus to the size of AoEs on area powers, and the range of all powers whether single target or ranged. (Something like 1ft for every 5ft of inherent range, resulting in 10ft melee and 10ft spheres being 12ft, 15ft melee being 18ft, 25ft spheres being 30ft, 50ft ranged being 60ft, 100ft ranged being 120ft, 5ft wide cylinders being 6ft wide, 10ft wide cylinders being 12ft wide, etcetera. Also +1* for every 5* on Cones, expanding 30* cones to 36*, 45* cones to 54*, so on and so forth.) This would be a massive boost in flexibility for Intelligence builds, valuable for DPSes and tanks and healers, without just being a direct increase to damage potential.
But, moving on to smaller and tamer things.
- Power variant Devices
Hopefully this includes Ultimate Chest Beam? I reported that one months ago and it never got a response. Fingers crossed!
- Powers
This is nice for less-optimized DPSes as well as Technology tanks I suppose! Download's always been a weird case that existed mostly to justify the jank that is Luminescent Slash sharing a seat with Rec and End on "90% energy at all times or BAAAAAD" so long as you built your character properly, and served basically no purpose beyond that... or at least, it didn't until we got that one Cybermind PVD I forget the name of because nobody uses it. But it does have its place in some builds anyways. However, a thought occurs: these new Download Advs are taking after old Download Advs that cost 2 adv points, instead of the newer "USB Arrow" Download Advs from Archery that only cost 1 adv point.
Suggestion: change both the new Downloads being added now and the old Downloads from past LS powers to match USB Arrow's 1-adv-point cost.
- Pulse Beam Rifle
Finally. The change from 27+27/0.5sec to 30+23/0.5sec still leaves PBR slightly more expensive than its counterparts, but actually in the realm of viability now. Additionally, the return of Finite Improbability Engine as an effective curve flattener to deal away with the backloading allows PBR to be viable in situations where its user is constantly forced to stop attacking, like the infamous easy example of Teleiosaurus. This is very good. If I had to come up with any single suggestion though, then it would be that, unless I'm mistaken with my numbers, Pulse Beam Rifle is still more expensive and less damaging than R2+Uncompromising Assault Rifle, which in turn is lacking compared to other powers and PVDs.
Suggestion: give Pulse Beam Rifle a 2-point Adv that makes it deal +6% damage per stack of Plasma Burn on the target. This would fill in for PBR's missing "+30% or more on the dedicated single-target attack power" Adv, and require more maintenance than JUST tapping a defense debuff on a target every now and then, and the resulting damage output would be something like, and again, this is assuming my napkin math is correct, ~6% higher than R2+Uncomp Assault Rifle, while current PBR without a +30% Adv winds up doing something in the rough realm of ~4% less than R2+Uncomp AR. Again, keep in mind that Assault Rifle is much more drastically overshadowed by other single-target powers as well as other PVDs, so something doing slightly better than it still wouldn't top charts like other competitors would.[/color]
- Orbital Cannon
No real solid thoughts; this'll be nice for The Fissile as well as some other builds but won't be a must-take. Still, only refreshing for something that takes so long to wind up and requires a full wind-up to fire off is... iffy. With that in mind:
Suggestion: change this new Adv to instead apply Disintegrate and have a high chance of applying multiple stacks of Plasma Burn.
- Particle Blaster/Eye Lasers
This is nice in concept, but now that Plasma Burns are actually a lot easier to apply in the first place, just being able to refresh them if three are already on a target seems a bit... odd? But, first things first.
Bug: both Particle Blaster and Eye Lasers are not refreshing Plasma Burn correctly; they appear occasionally refresh the oldest stack but not any of the others, though it's hard to tell if this is the case for sure in testing. Tested at R1, wearing Nemesis/Catalyst Heirlooms, Int/Rec/End with no Slotted Passive and no specs. This bug applies to tapping, partial charges and full charges.
Bug: ranged Eye Lasers doesn't refresh Plasma Burn at all, not even the current buggy way melee Eye Lasers and Particle Blaster are going about it. Additionally, ranged Eye Lasers is missing the mention of refreshing Plasma Burns in its tooltip. Tested in the above conditions.
Now, having mentioned that, my suggestion for both of these is a simple one.
Suggestion: buff Particle Blaster/Eye Lasers' Plasma Burn refresh to instead refresh all Radiation Effects on tap/minimum use, to match Infernal Blast and Bite refreshing all Poison Effects on tap.
- Experimental Burst Ray
Neat I suppose? My only real thought here is that healers won't ever use Experimental Burst Ray to place a Healing Rune when they can just... use Soul Vortex. Or Medical Arrow. Or Pillar of Poz. This is just another dead spec that won't see use outside of people forcing themselves to use it explicitly because it isn't going to be used otherwise, in much the same way people force themselves to try and build Earth or Celestial DPSes on occasion. To change that and make this actually useful...
Suggestion: change the Runes spawned by this Adv to not count to the Rune cap of 1, allowing multiple to be placed on top of each-other. To compensate, exclude these "stacking Runes" from Enhanced Mending specs so that the buffed version of this Adv can't be used to endlessly maintain a half a dozen runes at once.
- Particle Cannon
Okay, so, I can't find any other mention of "Particle Cannon" throughout the entire thread. And I haven't been keeping track of every single new power added and their base damage numbers either. So I'm going to just assume this is referring to Plasma Cannon instead! So!
- Plasma Cannon
Neat change I suppose! Though it still suffers from the same core issues I've talked about ad nauseam, insofar as it physically cannot be used to consistently maintain Plasma Burn and Disintegrate on its own, which makes it a dead power outside of explicitly taking it for DPS check scenarios, of which we have a grand total of, like, one. (Teleiosaurus continues to be the dumbest piece of content in the game!) But. About that bug you can't repro with it, uh... I repro'd it in, like, five seconds of testing with the following.
Bug: Plasma Cannon isn't proccing Technological Prowess or Technological Enhancement stacks on full charge/initial use. Tested at R1, wearing Nemesis/Catalyst Heirlooms, Int/Rec/End with no Slotted Passive and no specs. It is proccing stacks on finishing its cooldown, but the initial full-charge is not proccing stacks, unlike other Technology powers, which can cause DPSes relying on Technological Prowess to run out of energy at an inopportune time. (Mostly the Fissile.)
This is my cry for help
Avenger Mastery is causing the tooltip for Laser Eyes and Particle Blaster to only display up to a 62% chance to apply Plasma Burn, but the actual chance seems to remain 100%
By extension, I checked Infernal Blast and it has the same issue. This is relatively minor so long as the actual chance is still 100%, but in the unlikely case that I was just extremely lucky and rolled that 62% chance across 30 different trials, it could be an issue.
Suggestion
Or maybe just create an ultimate version of Eye Beam:
Suggestion
Ultimate Eye Beam Power
The poster formerly known as Lightwave!
Give On-Next-Hit powers more useful ADVs
Considering this change killed stacking ONH powers and encouraging only using one and taking into consideration their LONG Cooldowns, It's fair to give them more useful AOE Debuff ADVs to the powers for being more desirable for using it only for the ADVs and not Rank 3
Suggestion:
Give [Sonic Device] Deafening Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Toxic Nanites] Debilitating Poison Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Radiation Poisoning] Disintegration Debuff ADV
Suggestion:
Give [Miniaturization Drive] Demolished Debuff ADV
Pretend Demolish makes sense for Miniaturization Drive because by shrinking the enemies you made them so small you can crush them! It makes sense in context
Suggestion:
Give On-Next-Hit powers 1 Point DOWNLOAD ADV
Preparation now is even more Desirable
I'm not forced to pick 3/3 Revitalize (again... who uses Energy Builders in endgame?)
3/3 Tactician became more useful
and having access to Healing Bonus with Enlightened is super
Thank you
Please consider in the future giving more MYSTIC Family powers access to Mystified Buff as well
This is not relevant to the current Framework rework but still, Mystified is underwhelming and underutilized
Suggestion:
Can we have Experimental Burst Ray actually have its own RUNE that fits the Technology powerframe?
Seeing Mystic Runes on a gadget power is kinda narly
The Visuals from the Medical Arrow's Rune fits it perfectly
and since I mentioned it earlier
YEAH... This change is straight up awful and makes this power aweful!
Have fun getting your Rank 3 Mini Device Disoriented replaced by your generic Disoriented from your other powers (Miniaturization Device being primary popular with the BRICK Family which has plenty innate access to Disoriented) 🙄
along with getting a lousy movement boost with the Gizmo Adv
Dead on arrival power change and I'm surprised not many players are vocal about it!
Despite being a "Problematic" power that caused issue in the past
In my opinion Miniaturization Device Generic damage Debuff should stay
and Reciprocating Gizmo should get you 3 Stacks of Furious along with the 3 stacks of Charged Up
Strafing Run ranks 2 and 3 do not trigger at your target, and instead targets yourself. The Pyre Patch spawned by this will also appear on you, but with Chemical Fire selected, the patch will spawn on the target, despite the damage still being located at you.
Also worth noting that at certain angles, the visual of the jet flying over will go over you instead of the target even with a rank 1 that actually works. Basically, at R2 and R3, Strafing Run is acting like a PBAoE instead of a targeted AoE.
Nuclear Fallout does not count properly to Ultimate Orbital Cannon's damage scaling for the purposes of using "four adv points" for maximum damage.
Rank 2 + Nuclear Fallout:
For reference:
Rank 2 (alone):
Rank 2 + Anvil of Dawn:
Rank 3:
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Very late in the day to be suggesting but...could Storm Cloud get a 2 point 10/10/10 debuff advantage vs Crushing/Cold/Elec? Would have to be something new like:
+ Applies Eye of the Storm/Storm Surge to affected targets, which reduces resistance to Cold, Crushing and Electrical damage for a while. (-10/-10/-10% for 15 seconds)
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Set the Download advantages on the Gadgeteering Powers to 1point advantages. That's what they are on other powers like Straight Shot or Medical Arrow.
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About the Intelligence tree changes; I think Enlightened is so strong that it ruins using other primary stats as healer instead of being a variety. My recent tests on PTS showed me that the healing bonus amount you can get from Enlightened can scale up to +%154 healing bonus (Its the highest healing bonus you can get in the game). That might result in a situation people only consider using Intelligence primary and stacking full presence, also stacking perfect with secondary stat bonuses of Intelligence's traits (Preparation and Tactician) which i also considered making it overpowered compared to Presence tree. I would prefer it to be another variety for Intelligence based gadget healing powers, not the best option that overwhelms Presence tree. So I have a suggestion.
Suggestion: Make Enlightened Intelligence scaling instead of cooldown reduction so it can make up healing bonus lose from not having Presence and can work with new healing form better.
Thinking about it, and, absolutely seconded. Not because current Cooldown Reduction stacking gives "too much healing" or something, but because in its current state it strongarms Intelligence healers into going for pure cooldown reduction if they want to "do it right," and because the current changes to Intelligence are forcing it to lean very hard into SSS stacking exclusively, which... yuck, yeah, let me play a healer that isn't identical to the last nine "one single-target heal, one AoE heal, Pre-stacked and nothing but survival utilities on the side" builds. (Giving Int another reason to PSS stack and giving it more compatibility with the new Int-scaling healer toggleform would be more interesting, and I'm going to be brutally honest: Int does not need specs that reward intentionally stacking Cooldown Reduction or Cost Discount since Int gives massive amounts of both already.)
This is my cry for help
The changes regarding Intelligence Spec tree that could provided its potential for Tanking, that would be perfect, however it would impose the unbalance for healing as for the following reasons. So do with Specialization re-positioning.
First I would like to quote the recent changes
and the prior
Since within Tier 2 Intelligence specs already has 'Expertise' to buff secondary super stats the new enlightened on tier 2 would impose a strong bonus healing that could go beyond 100% on end game gears alone. Yet plus with +20% Bonus healing from secondary Presence would go beyond control.
The buff from that Expertise currently provided should be enough for the well rounded.
Secondly, with the new toggle supportive form 'Technological Advancement' this could go beyond under control, whilst many Auras or support passive in the game are scaling with Presence, (Except Inertial Dampening Field) to buff allies, Intelligence in my point of view should not involve any further in bonus healing to leave Presence stay on the flag for that. However, in the future, I wish there might be a considering revamp or 'less offensive' Primary super stats such as Recovery, Endurance (and even Constitution) to be more capable of candidate healing and tanking instead, since we are also have toggle forms that are scaling with them (e.g. Fear consumption, Smouldering for Recovery, and Vital Shielding for Endurance).
Third, the relocation between Revitalize and Enlightened, is understandable due to the following moves of 'Enlightened' 's current reworking, but as per said on the above, I wish you could reconsidering both reworking and repositioning them.
Hence my suggestions regarding the Specialization changes.
Suggestion:
1. Keep Revitalise and Enlightened on the same positions as the old one, with Enlightened spec characteristic remain as the old one as well, in boosting non-super stats, but Enlightened's rank could be reduced to max at max at R2 in responses to the current's Preparation and Tactician changes.
2. If you are still considering of adding bonus healing to Intelligence spec tree, please consider to divert Enlightened's current approach to Revitalized instead, but reduce the scaling from cooldown reduction on gears to be on secondary super stats with a cap on 20-25% bonus healing. Since Revaltalize that stay on Teir 2 specs, could be an option for supportive Intelligence, in sacrificing Detect vulnerability because of the 5 spec points limitation. Also with the reworked Preparation a tank could also utilise extra bonus healing from my proposed Revitalize on Tier 2 specs (which they possibly also pick Tinkering in tanking).
If my proposition on Revitalised reworking being relocated to tier 1, there is a possibility that people could take both Revitalize and Detect Vulnerability, to prevent this thats why I have proposed to not relocate them at all.
Or in this case if you do not want to divert current Enlightened approach, you could keep Revitalise on the current approach, as same as the old one, and keep the same position on Tier 2 as on my number 1 spec suggestion.
3. Intelligence Mastery could stay as it was, but could get a buff with +15 max energy in addition to adding non-super stats.
Additionally, about power changes, I have noticed some very convincing approach on Gadgeteering, esspacially for debuff application methods, specifically Particle damage debuff Disintegrate, but I found none of them apply 'Burn through' which is understandable because they are all dealing particle damage. Even though it would be nice to have one of them, here are my suggestions regarding the power which might not be on focus but hope you are considering.
Suggestion:
1. Might's Onslaught power: Nuclear Shockwave's Nuclear Fallout Advantage applies 'Burn Through' instead of disintegrate. since the power is already dealing both particle and crushing damage.
2. Also if possible, New Power: Eye lasers add 'Burn Through' advantage.
Hope you will consider,
best regards
Apologies if double commenting, my previous comment does not seems to show
I suspect the way the tooltip was reading out on Repurpose was obfuscating how high a value you can get on it. Repurpose and Enlightened are using the same scaling, (just with different stats), and you can currently get Repurpose quite a lot higher as there are more outlets for gear Offense bonuses.
I'm not against toning down Enlightened, but this may be a case where both specs may need to be toned down.
I made a little spreadsheet to compare different values that are relevant to a healer across various superstat choices. Cosmic gear and Cosmic Presence used for all primary stats except for PRE primary. PRE primary is using OV gear. I only looked at things that were obvious and gear wasn't optimized, so what you see here is not fully comprehensive of the capabilities of each primary stat.
Looking at healing value alone, which seems to be the cause of calls for nerf, I don't see it to be so overperforming. While INT primary may have a higher healing value compared to any other superstat tree, overhealing is generally valueless to team play. You get more team play value in REC primary due to reduced cooldowns or in PRE primary due to stronger AoPM value and strong CC and resistance debuffing. INT primary has no other particularly unique properties for a healer (stacking PRE, you don't get much value from Battle of Wits), so high healing value ends up as INT primary's only unique property. (Edit: You do get some CC value from Expertise though.)
What I do see as a potential problem though is in the case of a healer that is INT/CON. INT/CON healer can become both very durable and have very high healing value. (Side note: Both of these would also be very strong for a tank role as well, but I would argue that it is fine as this kind of tank would lack offensive value which is not desirable in endgame content.)
Suggestion
Swap the positions of Preparation and Tinkering specializations in INT primary tree.
This swap makes it so that you can't simply pick both Preparation and Expertise which lowers the overall max health gain and healing that an INT/CON/PRE build would have.
Edit: Or don't change anything. It doesn't really need a nerf. I thought about it more and the spec swap has some niche undesirable consequences on some other builds that already don't perform so well.
Edit2: Realized my modding for PRE primary didn't match the modding of the other trees.
Im actually Repurpose user with Justice+OV(sniper glove) gear sets and i can only get +%104(347.03) healing bonus from it. Also using Justice+OV(sniper) makes me a bit vulnurable because i can't acces other endgame gear sets bonuses. But with the Intelligence case, cooldown reduction stat is much more easier to gain, and you don't sacrifice anything to gain it. So IMO this makes it broken.
Suggestion: For Detonator Switch, please consider making the Attack Toy Replicated/Clone Toy detonation damage the same as the original Attack Toy and not reduced damage.
[/quote]
Suggestion
Allow Medical Beam: Rejuvenator to trigger even while not using Medical Beam.
FC.31.20240621.21
This is a poorly thought out nerf based on extreme edge cases. Curious as to how this affected actual characters, I decided to compare my Mind AT between PTS and live. Using live gear rather than unrealistic tuned PTS setups, I have:
Mind AT (3/3 Repurpose, 347.5 offense):
This is roughly a 10% heal power loss for nothing. I don't think anyone thought Mind AT healed too much, or that Empathic Healing needed a nerf. Other PSS ATs such as Radiant, Witch, and Blazing are also affected by this. AT healers are already weaker than FF healers, and to be further weakened like this is simply unreasonable.
FC.31.20240621.25
Justice offense increased by +28: +147.4 -> +175.4
Virtuous bonus healing increased by +2%: +38% -> +40%
Distinguished defense increased by +1: +63.6 -> +64.6
The specialization applies on the Damage Strength layer rather than the Base Damage layer, resulting in a ~1% actual effect.
But.
Since we're now having specs from elsewhere other than Intelligence being looked at...
Suggestion: change Warden tree's "Upper Hand" to proc off all active defense debuffs applied by the player, similar to Onslaught Slicer gloves. Upper Hand used to do its job correctly before we got a whole slew of melee powers, PVDs and devices that deal differing damage typs and rely on debuffs that Upper Hand doesn't cover, like Bullet Ballet (Armor Piercing) / Brilliant Cleave and Therakiel's Blade (Devoid) / all three Imbued Gauntlets and Cloak of the Infinite Planes (Hexed) / Electric Vengeance and Thundering Claws (Superconductor) / Havoc Hammer (Deafening) / the Toxic TKBlade PVD family (Debilitating Poison) and more. Currently, Upper Hand's requirement of having one of a few specific debuffs that are often incompatible with these builds active for maximum damage results in unnecessary build clutter that "intended" melee setups like pure BCF/Haymaker/Annihilate/Massacre/Dragon Claws/Dragon Wrath/etcetera spam don't have to worry about.
Suggestion: change the "bonus damage" of Guardian's Make It Count from Additive layer (nearly nothing) to Base Damage. Blasts are mostly varying flavors of mid to begin with outside of builds using Avenger mastery to quick-fire a single Blast on occasion; there's no reason for Make It Count to be on the Additive layer.
Suggestion: change Ego's Sixth Sense from a 3/3 spec to a 2/2 spec while retaining the same scaling, to match Ego's other "3/2 split pairing" of Follow Through 3 + Exploit Opening 2, Strength's intended 3/2 split pairing of Overpower 3 + Brutality 2, Intelligence's intended 3/2 split of Detect Vulnerability 3 + Expertise 2, Dexterity's intended 3/2 split pairing of Deadly Aim 3 + Expose Weakness 2, and more. Currently, Sixth Sense is drastically outpaced by Exploit Opening in almost all situations, and Exploit Opening relies on having high crit severity and low crit to moderate chance to benefit the most, which makes secondary stacking (and Sixth Sense is for secondary stacking) almost always worse than just pure Ego stacking for Ego Prime. Flattening Sixth Sense to a 2/2 so it can pair with Follow Through better still wouldn't be better than Exploit Opening in most situations, but it would give a small and welcome bump to secondary stacking for Ego Prime builds.
Suggestion: change Recovery's Super Charged to instead give its 5%/10%/15% bonus at 65% or higher energy, and double this value at 90% or higher (10%/20%/30%) to function similarly to Luminescent Slash's End Of The Line Adv. A lot of ATs are saddled with having "no-damage infinite-energy" primaries, namely Recovery and Endurance (Intelligence is at least allowed to do damage.) Additionally, the easy energy that these primaries provide tend to newbie-trap less experienced players that think these are great primaries because they don't have to EB constantly when they have them, totally neglecting that their builds are bad and they wouldn't need these energy-heavy low-damage primaries if their builds were good in the first place. Since Intelligence has defpen, and now some rather frightening secondary scaling, I'd like to raise that Recovery should be allowed to put out obscene numbers of low-severity crits to compensate, to bump Recovery's usefulness a little bit more and put it in a similar camp to secondary-stacked Ego and even moreso secondary-stacked Intelligence for "the crits are tiny but boy is there a whole lot of them."
Suggestion: swap the locations of Endurance's Quick Recovery (2/2 on the bottom row) and Kickback (2/2 on the top row.) This is specifically to tie into my next three suggestions, and serves no purpose on their own since those are both kind-of useless specs (though Kickback is even more useless; you're NEVER EBing with an energy primary unless you did something horribly wrong.)
Suggestion: change the function of Endurance's Kickback to instead increase critical chance, critical severity and base direct damaging power costs when above 75% of max energy by 7.5% each at 1/2 and 15% each at 2/2. Endurance is all about having massive amounts of energy, and if used correctly, you will. However, Endurance doesn't actually have many good uses for all that energy. Outburst exists, but isn't enough on its own to justify passing up more effective mainstays like Strength, Ego, Dexterity or Intelligence. Consider this as something that'd help bring Endurance up to par with the rest.
Suggestion: change Endurance's Outburst to simply give its benefits when above 75% max energy instead of 90%. This is for the same reason as the above. Endurance needs an excuse as well as room to actually chew through that energy. Which leads into one last suggestion for Endurance.
Suggestion: change Endurance's Quick Recovery to instead cause the user to receive 10%/20% more energy from all sources (toggleforms, energy unlocks, consumables, friendly Onslaught Savior Gloves, etcetera.) Sticking to the theme of the second row usually being more about extra damage or healing output, both having survivability tools, and the first row being more utility-based; this is to help turn Endurance into a woodchipper. (And to provide, ideally, more means of using... certain openly-acknowledged-as-too-expensive abilities and PVDs like the Ghosthunter Phase Rifle, as well as give leveling builds more of a kick as well.)
Having said all of that, since other powers and things in general are being brought in for review:
Suggestion: reduce the activation and maintain costs of- and buff the Pull strength of- the U-MD Ghosthunter Phase Rifle PVD. Since Soul Vortex is getting its Pull buff to actually be passably useful, and Electro Magnet now exists as a counterpart to it, this PVD has no excuse for costing an obscene amount of energy when other PVDs have stronger raw damage, wider range, don't have their damage gimped if enemies aren't clustered together, and cost half the energy for all of that.
Suggestion: revisit other powers and advs that rely on a Pull to function, such as Ebon Rift, Quicksand, and Storm Summoner with the Magnetic Adv, and give them buffs as necessary. Even more apparent with powers like these that are designed explicitly to pull enemies in closer is the fact that Pulls are pretty fundamentally flawed due to how mobs rubberband at all times in this game. Go ahead, pop into the powerhouse on Live to look at these powers as they are with a server that has even a few dozen people on it, and you'll see that mobs being Pulled in will start walking faster and faster beyond how fast they should be able to run to ignore Pulls, sometimes even ignoring movement speed penalties entirely such as this video where jogging test dummies rubberband to ignore R3 Quicksand while being affected by R3 Ebon Sigils and R3 Earth Form AND A SNARE, for a total movement speed penalty of 24%+30%+100%+100%, for a total of 254% movement penalty, which should- to my admittedly limited knowledge- result in them only being able to move at somewhere around 28% of their base speed. This is a bonus point for Ghosthunter Phase Rifle needing a look-over as well. This is why anything involving Pulls always winds up having to be paired with the mobs wanting to get close to someone that happens to be pulling them in, otherwise they ignore everything and power-walk out of any number of Pulls and movement debuffs. It's why Whirlpool has its mandatory Root effect paired with it as well. Video seen below, recorded on Live:
Suggestion: change the "Lingering Darkness" Adv for Dimensional Collapse to instead make Dimensional Collapse apply Devoid in the first place, rather than only refreshing it and randomly re-refreshing it, forcing sub-optimal use of Dimensional Collapse to maintain Devoid or losing Devoid to optimally use Dimensional Collapse. The reason Hex of Suffering is good is because it applies Hexed when used, which makes it reliable and consistent. Devoid, however, is in a bad place as far as debuffs go, for no good reason. Consider also that most defense debuffs have an apply on tap, whether via devices (like Atomic Strike and Will of the Tiger Cub) or powers (like Chest Beam, Hurl, Frag Grenade, Incendiary Grenade, Particle Smash, Fire Snake, Hex of Suffering, Will-O' The Wisp and more.) Devoid is overdue for a tap-applier that doesn't force its user to play footsie with juggling the debuff and some secondary effect, or forcibly charging up a ranged attack for it (which may not actually be good when considering that melee Dimensional combos exist. Looking at you, Brilliant Cleave!)
Suggestion: revisit the Laser Shotgun PVD, and change Plasma Sheer into a buff applied directly to the player that increases Laser Shotgun's base damage by 10% stacking up to 5 times, instead of it being a debuff on targets. Additionally, increase the duration of Plasma Sheer up to 10 seconds to match similar effects such as Onslaught Glove bonuses, and instead cause Plasma Shear stacks to expire after dealing damage if Laser Shotgun is charged for more than 0.33 seconds (for a total of 1 second between charge and activation. Need I say more for this one? Laser Shotgun is almost great, it just suffers from Plasma Sheer being horribly thought out, and inverting Plasma Sheer's function to allow Laser Shotgun to be mixed with Particle debuff appliers as well as allowing it to be used as a sort of quasi buff-rupture would make it much more flexible without actually directly increasing the PVD's maximum potential damage output.
Suggestion: give Typhoon the same Focus Point adv that Force Cascade has. I feel like this one's obvious too, but since Force and Wind share the same problem of being the set where the dedicated "correct single target attack" happens to just be "the AoE that hits the hardest," giving it Focus Point would just be pleasant and useful for purist Wind builds who would then have a more valid excuse to use Typhoon and Hurricane together.
Suggestion: revisit various slotted passives that have "apply set-related debuff when taking damage" effects, namely Fiery Form and Hearth with Clinging Flames, Ice Form with Chill and the likes, and give them a small chance to also apply these set-related debuffs when dealing damage, similar to Radiation Suit. No real thoughts to add to this one, just "good for parity, and better than nothing for Fiery Form given how generally bad it is since Fiery Light got turned into Additive rather than Base damage."
This is my cry for help