Fix Plasma Beams

arider999 · October 2014

Ok, after the last nerfing, plasma beams are useless, my PB rank 3, with Reconstraction Biosteel rank 6, shoots only 2 times before i need to reload, thats useless, please fix the energy consumption, i dont care about target debuffs, i just want to be able to use Plasma beams, which i have spend good Q to purchase.

chaelk · October 2014

you can use it, you just now can't spam it continuously. That's partially Biosteel now working properly.

and from a Non vehicle user, this is rather a... large, blunt object method of fixing the plasma sheer problem.
let me just swipe caliga's suggestions.
got them
You could of made it so the plasma beam sheer affect was a stacking effect for the player only, as a buff
-sounds good but what's the buff limit

-Made it so it capped at 10 stacks, and making all plasma beams on the target doing a 1.5x more damage only
10 stacks total over everyone , might actually work.

-Give it a flat damage increase as if it had stacks already, and give it a short CD to discourage spamming
hmm can you shorten CD on vehicle powers?

-Increase it's damage exponentially, and give it a moderate CD
define exponentially and moderate

serpinecoh · October 2014

What I'm not clear on is how its damage compares to what it did formerly and other weapons:

Based on the tooltip on my vehicle (Dasher Winter Sleigh II), PB is supposed to be clocking around 740 damage per quarter second (2960 damage per second). The built in Ice Beam on my vehicle does 160 x 4 each second (so 640 per second). So that sounds like I'm getting over four and a half times as much damage output while PB is running compared to Ice Beam.

Energy wise, I can get about 4 seconds of plasma between 4 second recharges, so cutting that figure by half for downtime I'm still doing two and quarter times the damage of my Ice Beam.

This doesn't sound that bad to me, though I'm not really a big vehicle data person so I welcome more info before I decide to swap out to something from one of my other vehicles.

chaelk · October 2014

try quasimojo's combat parser on it

pantagruel01 · October 2014

Once you count in time spent on reloading, activation time on the power, and target damage resist (typical high rank target 20%), both Kaiserin and I were able to achieve a sustained DPS of about 1300 on a single target.

serpinecoh · October 2014

pantagruel01 wrote: »

Once you count in time spent on reloading, activation time on the power, and target damage resist (typical high rank target 20%), both Kaiserin and I were able to achieve a sustained DPS of about 1300 on a single target.

How does that compare to other weapons / old PB though? Is there a chart somewhere?

chalupaoffury · October 2014

serpinecoh wrote: »

How does that compare to other weapons / old PB though? Is there a chart somewhere?

Old plasma beam was throwing over 4k.

Unknown · October 2014

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ashensnow · October 2014

bluegrassbeast wrote: »

And all the uproar and ill will?

This is why nerf-herders need to siddown and shaddup. Traiturtlre had to lock a thread over the outrage.

And for what? What benefit?

Threads do not get locked for outrage. They get locked for people (on both sides, this is not a dart aimed at anyon in particular) acting like children.

spinnytop · October 2014

I thought Plasma beams was an aoe power tho, not a single target dps power.

sorceror01 · October 2014

spinnytop wrote: »

I thought Plasma beams was an aoe power tho, not a single target dps power.

Nah, it damages everything within a small radius of the primary target.

xydaxyda · October 2014

Needs energy cost reduced and damage slightly increased.

pantagruel01 · October 2014

sorceror01 wrote: »

Nah, it damages everything within a small radius of the primary target.

It's a cylinder; similar area to effects like minigun or gatling.

Unknown · October 2014

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cblue2013 · October 2014

I'd agree with that. It is quite frustrating to log in and find that the basic vehicle weapon is now more effective in terms of DPS than the Plasma Beam R3 I spent money (zen) and time (Q grinding) on, especially when there seems to be little in terms of explanation or reasoning behind the decision.

The reason why I spent the money and worked for the Q was because I'd hit the development limits of my character (a lvl 40 AT Grimore, silver account). I've retconned the build, finessed it as far as I can, but the only way to improve it is better gear. And to get that, I need to do Rampages. Now these aren't easy for an AT. Gravitar kills you all the time, F&I do as well.... they're not actually much fun because the limitations of the character are too obvious, too blunt. The vehicle missions, though,are enjoyable, because I can (could) get past my character's limits and participate properly. Which means I play more, enjoy the game, spend more money on zen.... surely that's the idea?

I know there are people who say it's Champions Online, not Vehicles online. I know that PB caused problems with the Mechanon finale and makes Forum Malvanum a bit easy.... but that was just people using the best tool to get around rather one-dimensional and tedious zap-a-boss content which otherwise many players feel like they can't do. ( Mechanon, incidentally, was the end of that road - you can't keep on buffing up bosses with millions of HP and huge insta-kill attacks in response to the high-end players' demands, because you end up with an event than 70 people are doing all the time, while the rest of the game gives up and moves on. )

PB didn't break the game balance where the content was well thought out (Sky Command, for example, where I've seen loads of failures due to everyone zapping the Mega-Destroid and ignoring the other bits of the ship) and it definitely opened up the game for low/mid powered toons to keep on playing. So this nerf really does feel like a bit of a dampener, and is that what the game needs? Probably not. Put it back the way it was, please.

mrhinkypunk · October 2014

Kind of pointless for them to change it back now, the damage is done to the community and the vehicles shouldn't of even had so much work done on them in the first place. Can we call for them to stop working on vehicles full stop and start working on powers, even if new powers are something you have to pay for or unlock they just make things so much more interesting. (I really don't think the latest powers were interesting at all, one was an old NPC power which had the exact same use as an already existing power anyway making it basically just a reskin. The form thing was kinda boring and had no relevance to me.)

spinnytop · October 2014

sorceror01 wrote: »

Nah, it damages everything within a small radius of the primary target.

So then yes, it is an aoe power.

roughbearmattach · October 2014

I'm not a vehicle fan, and I use them only sometimes.
Still, Plasma Beam is now a pointless weapon on the few vehicles I use. The damage is okay, but the energy cost is so high, I do much better with Incendiary Rounds or even Flamethrower against single targets.

flowcyto · October 2014

Vehicles aren't nearly as great now for focused dps, but as long as certain other weapons aren't further touched then there's still some merit to vehicles beyond being fancy travel powers. They still have at least one really good AoE option (more if ya dun mind knocks) and at least one semi-decent boss dps option. Plus, the healing drone is still pretty powerful for a self+group survival cd.

Fix Plasma Beams

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