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FC.30.20120808a.0 PTS Update

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  • purg777purg777 Posts: 42 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    kaizerin wrote: »
    Where is this parse? What builds were being used? What was it being compared to? What players were involved? Was knock immune bonus being considered? Why only Might? There are plenty of other melee abilities that are on par with Might that apparently need a gigantic buff if this parse is 'accurate,' but quite frankly I suspect it's very much not.

    People did what crush asked for in terms of testing, feel free to ask him yourself.:biggrin:
  • sagewithbubblessagewithbubbles Posts: 484 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    kaizerin wrote: »
    Where is this parse? What builds were being used? What was it being compared to? What players were involved? Was knock immune bonus being considered? Why only Might? There are plenty of other melee abilities that are on par with Might that apparently need a gigantic buff if this parse is 'accurate,' but quite frankly I suspect it's very much not.

    Examples of said melee abilities?

    Aggressor/Enrage was the band-aid covering up the bullet wound. Losing the combo didn't suddenly make Might start having problems.

    The issue's with the costing of knockback and Enrage-building, and the scaling of damage with charge time. Now that Might doesn't have a unique/near-unique damage buff, these issues are manifesting as "bad damage".

    But I think my definition of its problems is a bit different from some of the others I've seen (and probably yours).

    I wouldn't have suggested bumping up the damage amount on knock-resistant stuff (as that doesn't fix the underlying problems), but it does at least provide another band-aid that gives it enough of a niche to maybe see more use. So it's basically Enrage (a near set-specific damage boost) in another form, that's far more situational.

    Still doesn't help it in general use, but eh.

    I'm actually asking for your list of abilities that need buffing because I want to see how it compares to mine:
    • Roomsweeper
    • Uppercut
    • Haymaker
    • Havoc Stomp
    • All of HW that isn't Cleave and Skewer
    • Earth's melee attacks

    Claws needs an AoE and Frenzy could stand being counted as a "Combo Attack", but aside from the above (bulleted) list and those two things, I don't think there are a lot of power-specific issues with melee.

    There's a hell of a lot of systemic issues with melee, but buffing individual powers isn't the best way to address that. And most melee sets can be made to work "well enough", so it's not nearly as urgent as, say, making Telepathy a functioning set.
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  • beldinbeldin Posts: 1,708 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    I still need to setup my Might crit build on one of my modular melee geared toons. No doubt there will be humorous results.

    Yep.

    Sure enough.

    25k Haymaker .. c'mon thats much too less .. 50k would be decent. 25k is good maybe
    for an AoE like Havoc Stomp and Shockwave should make 5k per tick, that would bring
    Might maybe en par with Telepathy :biggrin:

    Ahhh .. NON-CRIT damage of course :cool:
    R607qMf.jpg
  • blademaster5121blademaster5121 Posts: 956 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    beldin wrote: »
    25k Haymaker .. c'mon thats much too less .. 50k would be decent. 25k is good maybe
    for an AoE like Havoc Stomp and Shockwave should make 5k per tick, that would bring
    Might maybe en par with Telepathy :biggrin:

    Ahhh .. NON-CRIT damage of course :cool:

    For those of you out there, don't worry, she's being sarcastic :biggrin:
  • purg777purg777 Posts: 42 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    For those of you out there, don't worry, she's being sarcastic :biggrin:


    :eek: LIES!!!
  • sigmaseven0sigmaseven0 Posts: 714 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    You say Haymaker needs a buff:

    I'm actually asking for your list of abilities that need buffing because I want to see how it compares to mine:
    Haymaker
    but then i see this..
    beldin wrote: »
    25k Haymaker
    You can imagine how onlookers such as my self would be confused if not skeptical.
    Maybe you could have expand on what kind of buff haymaker needs, or a post a link if you already explained.

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  • sanguinevipersanguineviper Posts: 451 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    You can imagine how onlookers such as my self would be confused if not skeptical.
    Maybe you could have expand on what kind of buff haymaker needs, or a post a link if you already explained.

    Well I did have to tap spam upper cut 3x and tap demolish first, then fully charge haymaker to hit for 25,000-28,000 on a knock immune target. That took at least 8 seconds of setup, to be fair. Oh and using ice sheathe, of course, but without it it's still hitting for 20k+ consistently just with the knock immunity buff and/or demolish tap.

    Honestly, why not just make all brick powers incapable of crit? I'd never even look at any of the sets in the framework again, and also lose my HW toon that I'd finally just become happy with after On alert! let me finally build her crit. But it'd make all the folks complaining because they don't want to change their builds at all happy.

    Snark never dies.
  • cascadencecascadence Posts: 505 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    Quick question..... are (the bosses that are immune to knock by nature) the knock immune bosses affected by this??

    Because if that's the case then the super Haymakers don't need setup against bosses at all, right?
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  • sanguinevipersanguineviper Posts: 451 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    cascadence wrote: »
    Quick question..... are (the bosses that are immune to knock by nature) the knock immune bosses affected by this??

    Because if that's the case then the super Haymakers don't need setup against bosses at all, right?

    Right.

    And with that toon right there, full charge haymaker costs 55 energy, and focus refunds 40 energy on a crit, so I can hammer out two of them back to back, hit once with my energy builder, rinse, and repeat. Then throw a demolish tap out every 12 seconds to keep that ~15% crushing damage debuff up (even more if charged, though I only bothered with that the one time to get the 28,000 hit).

    Snark never dies.
  • sagewithbubblessagewithbubbles Posts: 484 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    You say Haymaker needs a buff:

    but then i see this..

    You can imagine how onlookers such as my self would be confused if not skeptical.
    Maybe you could have expand on what kind of buff haymaker needs, or a post a link if you already explained.

    That pic's with the current buff that was applied on PTS (which I mentioned I wasn't a particular fan of, but at least it gives Might stuff a niche.)

    See his explanation of the setup involved to do that.

    And then compare the DPS loss from interrupted partial charges or knocks (on the bosses that aren't knock-immune, like some of the Alert ones) to another equal-tier melee single-target attack (the numbers I ran were vs Burning Chi Fist, but it's going to take me some digging as it was done before the archive of the old posts).

    In a nutshell: Haymaker's charge damage is end-weighted and it has a longer charge time than other melee powers. Coupled with the ludicrous amount of knock distance (chasing a knocked target is a severe DPS loss, especially at the levels of knock distance SS-strength Haymaker can do) on a full-charge. And remembering that it needs a full charge to get the most out of its end-weighted damage. Oh, and the fact that fall damage was nerfed with On Alert.

    The bit about charge time/end-weighting puts it as a disadvantage in damage even if you're able to avoid knocking the target. It's also more vulnerable to the target moving (or moving/knocking/stunning you) due to the charge time, and it also comes with a higher energy cost without having an easily-accessible energy unlock to use.

    For energy unlocks, I'm comparing stuff like Rush, Ego Reverb with Leech or Supernatural Power. Something that doesn't require you to try to scatter your target or get hit (by which I'm excluding Defiance, Enrage and Unstoppable, funny enough). As Sanguine's post pointed out, you can use Rush...but there's nothing inherent about the power that's enabling you to use it. It's working with Dex, and you could fit any melee power in there to benefit about the same. Not saying Rush isn't a viable choice if you go with a crit build, of course.

    The above issues are less of an issue when you're only looking at single-shot spike damage or bursts of extremely high damage under ideal conditions (where you can then ignore the cooldowns) SanguineViper's screenshots show how high those time-limited spikes can get.

    The current changes on PTS are...probably...enough to wow some disaffected Might players back into using the set, as it gains a niche as the king of spike damage against inherently knock-immune bosses.

    I don't think that's good compensation for the charge time/energy/knockback issues, but I'm probably in a minority of both opinion and use.

    TL; DR version: It's a sledgehammer in a game that disproportionately favors death by a thousand cuts.

    Also melee knockbacks are a horrible mechanic for balance purposes and need to have their effect on power costing drastically reduced, as extensive knockback on melee powers is worth nothing near what it used to be.

    The above issues also apply, to a lesser extent, to Roomsweeper and Havoc Stomp. But I explained using Haymaker because it was mentioned.

    Part of the reason I don't think this'll really be "fixed" is for the same reason some HW stuff still self-roots: Thematics. Slow and powerful is harder to do in the engine than "slower and looks powerful with the potential to be buffed by universal buffs that'd be better used on almost anything else". So they go with slow and then kludge things to make it "powerful".
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  • blademaster5121blademaster5121 Posts: 956 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    Well, really, the only nice thing with claws was the shredded buff. The claws changes, in my opinion, were terrible, the energy cost increases for the meanial damage buff was completely uncalled for. We need for the following.
    1. Revert the Energy cost changes.
    2. Rework Tiger's Bite so it does not consume shredded, just it gains a buff from attacking Shredded foes.
    3. Fix the bug where Viper's Fangs increases the duration of Shredded upon completing a combo.
    4. Rework Rend and Tear to and AoE, keep its refresh.
    5. Apply another ~15-20% buff to Tiger's Bite's damage
    6. Add an advantage to Tiger's Bite, increasing the crit severity of the next Tiger's Bite by 15%. (Optional)

    Ok, I'm quoting myself, to bump these ideas up, and this really needs to happen before the AT comes out, because as of now, there is no reason ever to use Tiger's Bite, Read and Tear, or Viper's Fangs.
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,089 Cryptic Developer
    edited August 2012
    Oh god not infernal, its overpowered enough.

    I said it in jest, I don't want infernal buffed, it plays just fine. My point is the want for a might buff is irrational, as these other sets suffered the same 'loss' and I see no one else claiming they're destroyed. I have my qualms about Bestial, but it's not a terrible set and I made up my damage with crits. Funny thing Bestial actually lost damage with on alert since it lost it's bleed scaling due to enrage not buffing it (thankfully that will be amended).
  • sanguinevipersanguineviper Posts: 451 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    *wall of stuff*

    So if long, end weighted charges make it ok to have crits for 20k+ on a regular basis and spikes close to 30k, does that mean my TK blader can have her 24k Id breaches back now?

    Snark never dies.
  • sagewithbubblessagewithbubbles Posts: 484 Arc User
    edited October 2015
    wrote:

    And thus you kinda make my point for me.

    What other set is better used by actively not making use of its built-in gimmick?

    Might (and to a lesser extent, Heavy Weapons) is the only set in the game that's better off completely ignoring its own gimmick (knockback).

    Enrage-building used to be its other thing, but that has no value now when you can just spam a quick knockup/knockdown and get full stacks easily.

    Melee knockback isn't adding anything of value, and its often actively detrimental if you choose to use parts of the set. That wasn't as much the case when fall damage was better at dealing damage.
    So if long, end weighted charges make it ok to have crits for 20k+ on a regular basis and spikes close to 30k, does that mean my TK blader can have her 24k Id breaches back now?

    Bump up the full charge time by half a second (to match Haymaker's 1.83 second charge time) and make it nearly useless by comparison when tapped, and sure.

    Or, since the prevailing wisdom is "don't use the powers that don't make optimal use of the sets mechanic...", "don't use Ego Blade Breach, use Ego Blade Annihilation, noob! L2P, etc"​​
    Post edited by kaiserin#0958 on
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  • theravenforcetheravenforce Posts: 7,065 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    beldin wrote: »
    25k Haymaker .. c'mon thats much too less .. 50k would be decent. 25k is good maybe
    for an AoE like Havoc Stomp and Shockwave should make 5k per tick, that would bring
    Might maybe en par with Telepathy :biggrin:

    Ahhh .. NON-CRIT damage of course :cool:

    Yeah I know what you mean Beldin, my Mind AT can hit mobs for around 2k per tick with Psi lash and around 30k with Ego Blast. My healing power is through the roof, 6k per tick on Empathic...and 40k heals on MR bubbles, so pretty damn awesome...I mean we all know that in game right now Telepathy is one of the most powerful powersets, with it's own passive and block. The recent review really helped telepathy actually. I win all my duels with my Mind AT now. Freeform or not...Lets not even talk about my 1hr duration Ego Sleep...:eek:

    (LOL as if they would touch telepathy...:frown:)
  • sigmaseven0sigmaseven0 Posts: 714 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    TL; DR version: It's a sledgehammer in a game that disproportionately favors death by a thousand cuts.
    Sounds like you would want might to be less "chargey" and more "tappy", but not as tappy as BCF. I wouldn't call that a "buff" so much as a change in focus. I wouldn't mind Haymaker loosing some knock distance in favor of some Sage style changes but I also like knock on powers like Room sweeper.

    EDIT:Didnt someone say that demolish was rivaling BCF in dps? If so, doesn't that help strike a balance in might between charge friendly and tap friendly attacks?

    I like roomsweerper for its knock. It does good dmg for trash mobs and I also find its knock useful for mitigation.
    Part of the reason I don't think this'll really be "fixed" is for the same reason some HW stuff still self-roots: Thematics:mad:.
    Yes, the self root on HW is the reason i don't use it. Especially because, you would think that because HW self roots that it would feel more powerful than might, which it doesn't. Charging HW attacks should slow movement (like assault rifle) but not stop you completely.

    This leads me to my other complaint:
    kaizerin wrote: »
    As for melee abilities that need help over Might...
    Every new laser sword ability
    Plasma cutter inherited its animation and thus its "thematic" self rooting from heavy weapons. This is ridiculous because the blade is a laser and thus doesn't have any weight. Laser blades probably wouldn't weigh more than a flashlight, but it roots like a heavy weapon any way.
    Don't get me started on plasma burn not refreshing its own stacks...

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  • nephtnepht Posts: 6,883 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    I'm glad you figured out a way to keep shadow strike from becoming ridiculous fodder to be exploited into ridiculous ranges by certain wonderful people.

    ...Ya those Umpa Lumpas arnt to be trusted.

    For some reason I cant see the gas pellets when I throw them :/
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  • blumoon8blumoon8 Posts: 430 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    This leads me to my other complaint:

    Plasma cutter inherited its animation and thus its "thematic" self rooting from heavy weapons. This is ridiculous because the blade is a laser and thus doesn't have any weight. Laser blades probably wouldn't weigh more than a flashlight, but it roots like a heavy weapon any way.
    Don't get me started on plasma burn not refreshing its own stacks...

    Not trying to be nitpicky but I could have sworn it was based on SB sttacks...

    I say stuff and I say things, sometimes together but only when I'm feeling adventurous.

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  • blademaster5121blademaster5121 Posts: 956 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    blumoon8 wrote: »
    Not trying to be nitpicky but I could have sworn it was based on SB sttacks...

    Plasma Cutter was based on Skewer then reworked to 'cauterize' and do ST damage. the AoE was based on Scything blade, however.
  • sagewithbubblessagewithbubbles Posts: 484 Arc User
    edited October 2015

    I'm going to go as far to say that it's pretty much always better used without knockback. At least, with how knockback is on Live. The PTS changes are enough to make it occasionally a benefit for a power to have the potential to knock, as long as you're using it on something that knockback has no effect on (like a boss). In any and every situation where a knock is used for control, a knockdown or knockup would be far, far better.

    There's never a situation where you'd choose to knockback something over doing the extra damage that you would've gotten if the power wasn't costed according to having knockback. Or if you're using it for crowd control, there's never a situation where knockback is better than knockup/knockdown. That assumes you have the choice, which isn't usually the case, of course.

    Devs even sorta acknowledge this, in allowing you to turn Roomsweeper from a knockback into a knockup, if you apply certain types of CC first. They're granting you an advantage if you take an extra power investment.

    There are situations where the negatives of knockback aren't enough of a negative to prevent you from accomplishing your goals. Ranged knockback has a lot of these, as it's possible to gain the control aspect of knockback while still being relatively able to keep the knocked target in your range. Melee makes this harder, as it's very easy to knock something out of lunge range if you've got enough Strength.

    And I'm not saying Might has to be special. In fact, from the way I'm looking at it, fixes to Might would be bringing it back in line with other sets.

    As most of the "dedicated" or even half-dedicated (Laser sword) melee sets have a gimmick or gimmicks (Ego Leech, bleed application/rupture, bleed/fear interaction, crit chance increase/defense penetration on DB, crit severity and nothing on Claws), so did Might.

    Its thing was knockback and the ability to build Enrage with its attacks, something no other set had (until the introduction of Heavy Weapons, but it's still Brick). You'll note that most of Might's knockback-causing powers also used to be the Enrage builders (or part of a combo, with Uppercut/Haymaker).

    Fall damage from knockback has been nerfed. "Able to build Enrage stacks" is no longer something unique, therefore Might powers should not still be costed as if it were. And when I say "cost" here, I'm not just talking energy cost. I'm talking the interaction of energy cost with activation time with possible cooldown with range with damage that goes into making a power. ("the spreadsheets", in other words)

    There's a double-whammy to knockback with the current metagame going more and more towards knockback being more and more of a detriment.

    Timed missions, knockable kill targets, a reduction in the amount of PvP (meaning the ability to build for knocking players isn't as useful). All that combines to make Might less useful overall by comparison than it was.

    Enrage/Aggressor were the band-aid covering up these issues (as most Enrage builds that wanted a fast way to build stacks would take a Might attack, and people got used to using them for that purpose). Now the band-aid's gone.

    Also, thank you for mentioning Bullet Ballet. It got beat so hard with the nerf bat during the leadup to On Alert that I kinda forget it exists now. A lot of the melee powers that reside in hybrid sets are like that (see: Laser Sword stuff and Earth stuff). I gloss over them because they have deeper issues than the more dedicated melee sets.

    All of the above (and all of this) isn't to say that the other melee sets are all completely fine (the general melee issues hit some sets harder than others, and some have additional issues on top of that), or that I feel devs should do a full "Might/Brick pass" or anything.

    Spreadsheet tweaks are what I'd consider a somewhat minor change, and something that shouldn't take a ton of dev resources to do. That's why I'm continually responding, even though there's a fix in place (that probably took dev resources) that seems not too unacceptable to a majority.

    @Sigma:

    I don't necessarily want Might to be more "tappy" so much as I want "chargey" to be made more viable. That's conflated with the fact that most of Might's big charges were the ones that were used to build Enrage stacks, and thus the ones penalized with knockback to balance out the ability to build Enrage. They're two slightly separate issues that end up mostly intertwined due to the way the actual powers exist.

    Also, I don't compare Burning Chi Fist to Demolish because my original comparison was based on AT (Behemoth) vs AT (The Master), and I was trying to compare even-tier powers. Haymaker is Might's highest-tier single-target melee hit, as Burning Chi Fist is for Unarmed MA.

    They also fit somewhat similar positions in their respective AT's power progressions (last single-target attack each AT gets), and are somewhat similar in use (your big single-target hit that's used for damage, not necessarily to apply a debuff).

    The fact that Demolish hits pretty hard is nice for Might builds that want to use it, but you'll notice it also doesn't have any interaction with Enrage or knockback.

    That's the other reason why I'm not using it in comparison, because the issues I see with Might revolve around knockback, Enrage building and their costs in power budget. A blanket buff to all of Might would be...somewhere between entertaining and bad.

    I also did a comparison (in that topic that got archived) between Savage and Bestial. Haymaker vs Massacre is a stretch, progression-wise, but they fit similar niches (high single-target hit). Massacre's just infinitely better in actual use due to its interactions with Supernatural Powerand a much better added effect (knockdown vs knockback). Which also makes it better with Might's offensive passive (Unstoppable) and toggle form (Enrage) than Might is.

    I hesitate in calling these "Sage-style" changes because my ideas aren't fleshed out to the point where I'd consider them "good". I'm moreso hoping to get the devs to look at what I feel are the actual issues here (costing on Enrage-building and knockback-having melee powers) and tweak from the source, the spreadsheets. There are a bunch of other ways to kludge around the problem, but I don't like any of them enough to flesh them out fully.

    The current changes on PTS are placing another band-aid on Might's melee knocks, but it's got a cool-enough design on it that I think a lot of people will pick Might back up after it goes Live (yes, that's a horrible analogy. It was a long day).​​
    Post edited by kaiserin#0958 on
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  • sigmaseven0sigmaseven0 Posts: 714 Arc User
    edited August 2012
    (costing on Enrage-building and knockback-having melee powers)

    I think you have a point on these two issues.

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