I did have to do some weird stuff to maintain the cost of conduit and not compromise my build, and I have yet to try this in a live setting. Still though, a bit sketchy.
Celestial is in that awkward spot where it's not really allowed to be good at anything because of the powers having a dual nature. If it became more specialized maybe.
This is great. Love that folks put in the time to perform and post these kinda tests.
When I was putting together my speedster, I tested the activation and animation times of all the melee "click" attacks. I wanted to chain the fastest together into a whirling, spastic blender. I found out that day that the power descriptions have very little to do with reality. Frustrating!!!!
Power: Iron Chain Passive Used: Earth Form Rotation: Demolish -> Iron Chain Thoughts: Inferior version of Lash. Demolish hikes up its delay considerably.
Power: Iron Chain Passive Used: Earth Form Rotation: Iron Chain Thoughts: Including a no debuff version. While adding in Demolish does increase output, it's a pain to flip between melee and range and likely won't be that much of an increase under actual game encounters.
Edit: Updated parse as original one had a faulty delay.
Power: Stone Shot Passive Used: Earth Form Rotation: Demolish -> Half Charged Stone Shot -> Stone Shot x12 Thoughts: Half charge is there to refresh concentration. The power roots you which makes moving into melee to apply demolish difficult. I think Stagger could use some work.
Power: Stone Shot Passive Used: Earth Form Rotation: Stone Shot Thoughts: Without the debuff.
Power: Iron Cyclone Passive Used: Earth Form Rotation: Demolish -> Iron Cyclone Thoughts: So what this is telling me is if you want to go Might chains go Iron Cyclone all the way. Unless you really want the knockback adv on Iron Chain, which requires you to be enraged to get the most benefit, when chains don't scale off of melee damage. I think chains could use the strong arm adv too.
Power: Shockwave Passive Used: Electric Form Rotation: Shockwave Thoughts: Looked into Sonic Boom Generator for a sonic debuff. Sadly it's only 10% for 8 seconds, not worth it. Damage is pretty low, but power is considerably cheaper than most maintained aoes.
Lash's test has the benefit of 3 DoTs and a stronger debuff than for Iron Chain (not factoring any delays having to deal w/ being in melee at least sometimes). A 1.0 sec avg delay is a bit long for Iron Chain; I'd expect it to be closer to 0.9 sec or so, ala Lash's result.
I do notice if ya get Meteor Hammer that Iron Chain gets all weird w/ its anim and is def bugged for its charge dmg, so maybe that bug tied into it being a bit slower? Haven't tested them yet to know for sure.
Iron Cyclone being higher dps than Iron Chain at the same rank is hilarious, and also saddening (not surprising now that I look at their base numbers- counting activation delays hitting Iron Chain really hard vs. a maintain like Cyclone).
Stone Shot and some other blasts are turning up low here. Not really surprised at that tbh.
Alrighty, so I checked out the Meteor Hammer adv on Lash and Iron Chain. Both of their animations break, but in different ways. Lash will often skip the animation if tapspammed, Iron Chain stops animating if you tapspam it. However both of their delay times come out to .87, which got me scratching my head. I went back to Iron Chain and thought maybe certain ranks were broken and retested the power. I now got a .87 delay for the normal ranks as well.
This is really strange because I redid the Iron Chain parse twice initially as I thought something went wrong the first time I saw the 1 second delay. Second time I got the same results so I didn't inspect any further. Testing conditions did not change, so maybe I hit a lag spike while testing Iron Chain at first? PTS isn't too well known for those but I can't think of anything else.
Redid Iron Chain + Demolish but the delays remained the same. Updated the initial post.
The only real use I ever saw anyone get out of single target chains is for it's ranged bleed application adv to use with reaper's embrace.
Apart from that one use, I doubt they'll see much use even with a strong arm adv since dps will still be bad.
Since the tests are now getting to having demolish as a debuff, I do have a request to test demolish all by itself (r3 and r2+adv).
It would be good to see if an additional power does actually have a positive over spamming demolish.
I suspect that could lead to funny conclusion like "the best use of uppercut for dps is not using uppercut at all".
Eh, you need something to build and maintain enrage stacks.
As far as I understood, these tests are intentionally only about raw damage and not about mechanics. And you only need to build enrage if you are actually using enrage, either MA forms or IDF do not need any additional powers.
Of course the build would have to be changed from EGO to STR to properly test melee attacks. So for ranged builds using demolish for debuffs things can be a bit hard to compare.
Also keep in mind that even if you do add in mechanics there is a question of what power you are actually testing and/or would use optimally during normal play. If you have demolish and <some other power> anyway, and do <some other power> spam with demolish only for the debuff you can call that a <some other power>-test. But with those two powers in a build and when your dps would be better with spamming demolish while using <some other power> for building/maintaining enrage/concentration stacks, I would call that a demolish test.
SNRs and/or lag have messed up a number of my tests in the past (it'll happen more often if its over the Winter due to Cable + bad weather); I guess that could be the issue w/ the chain testing here. Still very odd stuff..
0.87 sec for Iron Chain seems closer to what it should be for a 0.67 listed activation w/ the input delay added. I would be inclined to support that result.
Power: Hurricane Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Hurricane Thoughts: Hurricane wound up being a lengthy test as I wanted to see if stacking up debuffs of appropriate types was worth it. Here's Hurricane all by itself, pretty high damage for a mobile wide range aoe.
Power: Hurricane Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Demolish -> Firesnake -> Hurricane Thoughts: Demolish and Firesnake not so much.
Power: Hurricane Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Firesnake -> Hurricane Thoughts: So this was a thrown out parse, although picking through the data trying to find out what went wrong brought my attention to some faults about Hurricane's split damage. Inspecting the individual hits shows that the crushing portion of Hurricane is at 16% res, which indicates it's not taking into account DUC.
The hits on this one don't add up. The second parse is at 2,638 hits, while this one is at 3,946. The conditions did not change between the two parses. The delay on this one is wrong, it should be .21. How this happened, I'm not sure. What's extra odd is I got this result twice.
Power: Typhoon Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Firesnake -> Typhoon Thoughts: Based on my findings for Hurricane I decided Firesnake was the optimal debuff choice on this. Pretty good for a cone, was difficult supplying the energy. Although it's a little sad that Hurricane comes pretty darn close to this.
Power: Wind Breath Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Wind Breath Thoughts: Not much to say about it, although I always found this good for a wolf character. KB adv on it is handy for rage stacking.
Power: Wind Breath Passive Used: Stormbringer Rotation: Fire Snake -> Wind Breath Thoughts: Firesnake didn't add all that much either. Split damage types can be a bit obnoxious when it comes to picking debuffs.
Power: Vicious Cyclone Passive Used: Fiery Form Rotation: Firesnake -> Vicious Cyclone Thoughts: You just keep showing up Might Chains.
Power: Fire Breath Passive Used: Fiery Form Rotation: Firesnake -> Heat Wave -> Fire Breath Thoughts: Debuffs really helped this one out. Pretty good damage, but least amount of utility amongst the breath attacks.
Power: Venomous Breath Passive Used: Fiery Form Rotation: Firesnake -> Venomous Breath Thoughts: For all its utility venomous breath does decent damage too. The poison adv + a bleed applicator would likely net more damage.
Power: Frost Breath Passive Used: Fiery Form Rotation: Firesnake -> Frost Breath Thoughts: The only breath attack that has scaling damage based on the maintain time.
Just a shot in the dark concerning the 2 odd Hurricane results- is it possible that ya were hitting >1 target (like the destroyable objects or the kill-able dummies below) accidentally for those tests? Large sphere pbAoEs can be a bit finicky like that.
It would not surprise me if spamming hurricane just makes it bug at some points, there are quite a few powers that start to behave oddly after a while when they are constantly spammed.
Power: Ebon Rift (Vengeful Shadows) Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Ebon Rift Thoughts: This power does not trigger concentration. I was using Lifedrain to maintain concentration when Rift was on cooldown, which has been cut from the log. Like all 'pet' powers DUC does not work with this. Interesting that Vengeful Shadows can crit, definitely better than R3 of this power.
Power: Ebon Ruin Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Ebon Ruin Thoughts: About where I expected it to fall.
Power: Ebon Ruin Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Ebon Ruin Thoughts: Not really ideal and under normal circumstances would likely drop your damage (frankly it's not worth it under ideal circumstances), but placing it up here since it's the only worthwhile dimensional debuff.
Power: Shadow Embrace Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Shadow Embrace Thoughts: Back in the day Shadow Embrace could knock cosmics. This was really annoying in Teleios Tower when someone would knock the Ultimate Mind into the water.
Power: Shadow Embrace Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Shadow Embrace Thoughts: With the debuff.
Power: Lifedrain Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Lifedrain Thoughts: Not bad damage for a power that has strong healing output.
Power: Lifedrain Passive Used: Shadow Form Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Lifedrain Thoughts: With the debuff.
Not much to add since these tests are pretty cut and dry, and somewhat along what I suspected. I think most people would just be using ER's ParaPara debuff when using the Ranged dimensional attacks, instead of EBB's debuff- its just more convenient in practice anyways.
Thanks for the added tests.
Yeah a lot of these are going to be boring since there aren't ideal loadouts beyond spam the one power (some interest might come when I get around to power armor).
Is this data useful for comparing powers of the same tier and type? Such as maintain T1 powers and T3 burst powers for example. Just to compare which powers simply fell behind because of balance neglect.
Power: Massacre Passive Used: Way of the Warrior Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Massacre Thoughts: Massacre gaining bleed refresh and Shred gaining Shredded really brought it up in the ranks. I rather wish Unstoppable benefited bleed damage as it would be a nice passive for this. Something to note, bleeding usually does not benefit from DUC. I'm not sure why it sometimes does, but it would appear that refreshing bleeds causes DUC to work even less with them (as seen in the lower logs).
Power: Bite Passive Used: Way of the Warrior Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Bite Thoughts: Very good damage for such a low tier power, sadly Massacre and Shred renders it pretty pointless.
Power: Shred (Penetrating Strikes) Passive Used: Way of the Warrior Rotation: Shred Combo Thoughts: Also very good damage for a power that's dirt cheap in cost.
Power: Frenzy Passive Used: Way of the Warrior Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Frenzy Combo Thoughts: Its advantage is not on the base layer so it's not worth using. I would say the damage is solid for an aoe, but melee cones are basically single target attacks with how limited they are. Not bad single target damage for how cheap in cost it is.
Power: Haymaker Passive Used: Unstoppable Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Haymaker Full Charge x4 Thoughts: That Max Hit. I do find it interesting that it's falling slightly below Massacre, as my old previous tests had it slightly above. Perhaps macroing rotations had something to do with it.
Melee cones benefit greatly from taking a second or two to reposition yourself if there are multiple (mobile) opponents.
mm, I disagree. The time it takes you to realign and squish the mobs into your cone you could be doing just as well using single target. Melee cones are pretty lackluster when you realize the high damage massive range aoes exist.
Power: Demolish w/below the belt adv Passive Used: Unstoppable Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) full charge Thoughts: R2 w/adv + full charges wound up having the same DPS as R3 taps. R3 taps is way too energy intensive.
Power: Uppercut Passive Used: Unstoppable Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Uppercut full charge x6 Thoughts: Solid, but doesn't do much more over just using Demolish.
Power: Beatdown Passive Used: Unstoppable Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Beatdown Thoughts: So there is something very, very strange about Beatdown. I was wondering why the first two hits were coming up very short on crit rate. Turns out the first two hits hit for dual damage, one crushing, and another slashing. The slashing portion cannot crit and does 0 damage.
????????
I'm lost.
The snare/root bonus damage advantage is likely falling on the severity layer as it was giving me no benefit. Or it doesn't work.
Power: Defensive Combo Passive Used: Unstoppable Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Defensive Combo Thoughts: Has better utility than Beatdown with the last hit being aoe, adding Defiance and having better threat generation.
Power: Laser Sword (Particle Acceleration) Passive Used: Electric Form Rotation: Particle Accelerator -> Unified Theory -> Laser Sword Thoughts: Can anyone take away Laser Swords melee crown? Particle Accelerator and Unified Theory are so clunky and boring, but the buff so worth it.
Still couldn't figure out what was going on w/ Blindside Blow either, and that was w/ tests using a full build + gear (so heavy into dmg DRs) and on a 'naked' and otherwise un-trained lvl 40.
There are a few other powers that do 0p slashing hits, as I recall, though I don't remember which at the moment. I think it's some trick to do with applying status effects.
The snare/root bonus damage advantage is likely falling on the severity layer as it was giving me no benefit.
This also happens with Energy Storm since the absorbing portion of the power (first phase) deals "Slashing Damage" but the value for it will always be 0. This is when the power is attempting to find any status effects like Clinging Flames, Negative Ions, Chill or containment fields (PFF/Protection Field/Field Surge/Energy Refraction/Mindful Reinforcement/Hardened Particle Matrix etc) to absorb and also apply Infused Energy.
By the way, have you compared Crushing Wave yet? I see you've covered Wind Breath...or have you done so already and I just haven't seen it >_>
Haven't done crushing wave yet, I'll get back to range powers sometime, was getting bored of the single rotation stuff and decided to wander into melee territory for a bit.
Haven't done crushing wave yet, I'll get back to range powers sometime, was getting bored of the single rotation stuff and decided to wander into melee territory for a bit.
Could always wander off into power armor, though that's going to be a mess because there's a ridiculous number of three-toggle builds (I count at least 27):
Micro missiles, plus any of 6 fist attacks (power gauntlet, tactical missiles, rocket fist, concussor beam, plasma beam, wrist bolter with automated assault) and 3 shoulder slots (any of Eye Beams, Minigun, Shoulder Missiles)
Any of those with chest beam taps mixed in.
Chest Beam, plus any of 3 fist attacks (concussor beam, plasma beam, wrist bolter with automated assault) and 3 shoulder slots.
Tzeentch almighty is it a task to maintain 3 toggles at once.
Just a test so far, using concussor, micro munitions and, chest beam and mini gun. The toggle rotation isn't optimal yet due to energy issues. Go figure I can't use dark transfusion. This is also using Targeting Computer, which is something I've been leery of doing.
Does seem to confirm the crit portion doing jack all squat, though.
Hey, another person tested LockOn! Good- that potential issue w/ TC was annoying me.
I can't tell about the severity increase here, but from my testing that was bugged along w/ the crit increase. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the dmgRes boost wasn't working either.
Tzeentch almighty is it a task to maintain 3 toggles at once.
From some logs on PA builds, I haven't seen people building less than 25 energy per second, and my PA builds 37 energy per second (optimal timing would get slightly more). Despite that, I have to use my energy builder every so often. Far as I can determine, it would take me somewhere between 50 and 60 energy per second to run constant.
The time it takes you to realign and squish the mobs into your cone you could be doing just as well using single target.
Well, maybe not. I have a heavy blade combo user, and a single blader with the advantage on the combo, and I have gotten into the habit of 'circle strafing' in melee. IE, Run into melee range, start firing the attacks, and rather than standing still, just sort of 'twitch around' my main target. I find that this causes the AI of the other mobs to adjust and move around me, and as a result, the cone winds up hitting quite a lot of them.
Note that I never pause an attack, either, I'm firing full speed the whole time.
The key is, I'm mainly about cutting down the main baddy. Any splash damage is a bonus. But by staying mobile in fights, I'd guess I add an easy 20-30 percent to my overall damage output.
And yes, it's a lot of work, but I'm pretty twitchy when I play, anyway.
Melee cones are pretty lackluster when you realize the high damage massive range aoes exist.
Yeah, lol melee.
I recently advocated that they add a 1 point tier4 advantage to all melee attacks that adds a +50 percent base damage boost. That would fix it!
I recently advocated that they add a 1 point tier4 advantage to all melee attacks that adds a +50 percent base damage boost. That would fix it!
You do know we have melee tank builds staying completely in-set and reaching >4k dps? Adding 50% base damage would increase that to >6k dps. That is more than most ranged sets can reach when going full out on dps.
The problem with ranged dps is the availability of so many overly strong powers on a cooldown, and the trouble cryptic has to keep cross-set synergies under control. The spammable ranged powers that are overperforming by themselves, only do so for a few percent.
I know melee needs some help, mostly in coneAoE attacks, but your idea is not going to improve things.
I think that was sarcasm, aiqa ;p
Melee's issues lie in that many encounters in this game are dramatically more difficult for melee.
While parses are proving that some standalone melee attacks are somewhat outperforming range, the reality is range has a lot of powers it can tack on to improve damage...melee not so much.
Because it's more dangerous to be in melee you're going to be spending more time avoiding attacks/not dying...where range has the luxury to sit back and pewpew without having to do much else, which will affect output. Gravitar is a stellar case of this.
Melee cones are bad compared to range aoe, sorry. Too much effort to hit more than one target when range equivalents are outputting just as much damage in a greater aoe. If there was a change I'd like to see for melee cones it would be turning them into pbaoes.
Er.. well never mind then... my sarcasm detection is usually not that bad.
The only problem I have with making all melee AoE pb, is that for lots of them the animations would look a bit silly. But I agree there is probably no other way to make melee AoE work well. There is another side of things, the long range pbAoE are just overperforming, not only compared to melee AoE but also compared to other ranged AoE. PbAoE should just never get anywhere near the dps of targeted AoE, or even some single target attacks, at least when the attack surface is so much bigger.
And I agree, the tack-on powers need a sane damage per invested time, in a freeform game any sort of balance is never going to work well without enforcing things like that.
I won't comment on this much, other than that I generally agree w/ Kaiz and Aqia concerning some of the melee vs. ranged balance issues and w/ AoE. I assume ya guys dun want this to turn into another balance 'politics' thread :x
edit: keep up the good work w/ the tests, either way. I hope ya can run more w/ TC so we can further verify any bugs w/ LockOn. Who knows, maybe we could push to get that changed/fixed, if so?
You do know we have melee tank builds staying completely in-set and reaching >4k dps? Adding 50% base damage would increase that to >6k dps. That is more than most ranged sets can reach when going full out on dps.
Well, okay.
1) Kaizerin has posted ranged builds that hit 8k dps. Hard Frost and Fire Snake is a helluva thing.
2) The designers of the game state in the game materials that melee does more damage than ranged, to make up for the increased risk of being in melee combat. This is currently incorrect.
So when you say melee builds could hit 6K, you're right! And this is what's SUPPOSED to be happening, according to the Devs of the game.
Melee needs a boost, or ranged needs to get trimmed back. Since nobody likes it when ranged attacks get trimmed back, the logical other choice is....
Comments
Celestial is in that awkward spot where it's not really allowed to be good at anything because of the powers having a dual nature. If it became more specialized maybe.
When I was putting together my speedster, I tested the activation and animation times of all the melee "click" attacks. I wanted to chain the fastest together into a whirling, spastic blender. I found out that day that the power descriptions have very little to do with reality. Frustrating!!!!
Passive Used: Earth Form
Rotation: Demolish -> Iron Chain
Thoughts: Inferior version of Lash. Demolish hikes up its delay considerably.
Power: Iron Chain
Passive Used: Earth Form
Rotation: Iron Chain
Thoughts: Including a no debuff version. While adding in Demolish does increase output, it's a pain to flip between melee and range and likely won't be that much of an increase under actual game encounters.
Edit: Updated parse as original one had a faulty delay.
Power: Stone Shot
Passive Used: Earth Form
Rotation: Demolish -> Half Charged Stone Shot -> Stone Shot x12
Thoughts: Half charge is there to refresh concentration. The power roots you which makes moving into melee to apply demolish difficult. I think Stagger could use some work.
Power: Stone Shot
Passive Used: Earth Form
Rotation: Stone Shot
Thoughts: Without the debuff.
Passive Used: Earth Form
Rotation: Demolish -> Iron Cyclone
Thoughts: So what this is telling me is if you want to go Might chains go Iron Cyclone all the way. Unless you really want the knockback adv on Iron Chain, which requires you to be enraged to get the most benefit, when chains don't scale off of melee damage. I think chains could use the strong arm adv too.
Power: Shockwave
Passive Used: Electric Form
Rotation: Shockwave
Thoughts: Looked into Sonic Boom Generator for a sonic debuff. Sadly it's only 10% for 8 seconds, not worth it. Damage is pretty low, but power is considerably cheaper than most maintained aoes.
I do notice if ya get Meteor Hammer that Iron Chain gets all weird w/ its anim and is def bugged for its charge dmg, so maybe that bug tied into it being a bit slower? Haven't tested them yet to know for sure.
Iron Cyclone being higher dps than Iron Chain at the same rank is hilarious, and also saddening (not surprising now that I look at their base numbers- counting activation delays hitting Iron Chain really hard vs. a maintain like Cyclone).
Stone Shot and some other blasts are turning up low here. Not really surprised at that tbh.
Nice tests, Kaiz.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
This is really strange because I redid the Iron Chain parse twice initially as I thought something went wrong the first time I saw the 1 second delay. Second time I got the same results so I didn't inspect any further. Testing conditions did not change, so maybe I hit a lag spike while testing Iron Chain at first? PTS isn't too well known for those but I can't think of anything else.
Redid Iron Chain + Demolish but the delays remained the same. Updated the initial post.
Apart from that one use, I doubt they'll see much use even with a strong arm adv since dps will still be bad.
Since the tests are now getting to having demolish as a debuff, I do have a request to test demolish all by itself (r3 and r2+adv).
It would be good to see if an additional power does actually have a positive over spamming demolish.
I suspect that could lead to funny conclusion like "the best use of uppercut for dps is not using uppercut at all".
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
As far as I understood, these tests are intentionally only about raw damage and not about mechanics. And you only need to build enrage if you are actually using enrage, either MA forms or IDF do not need any additional powers.
Of course the build would have to be changed from EGO to STR to properly test melee attacks. So for ranged builds using demolish for debuffs things can be a bit hard to compare.
Also keep in mind that even if you do add in mechanics there is a question of what power you are actually testing and/or would use optimally during normal play. If you have demolish and <some other power> anyway, and do <some other power> spam with demolish only for the debuff you can call that a <some other power>-test. But with those two powers in a build and when your dps would be better with spamming demolish while using <some other power> for building/maintaining enrage/concentration stacks, I would call that a demolish test.
I don't think Uppercut would score lower, since it gets that nice KB bonus damage.
Ah ok I'll just need to be patient then.
0.87 sec for Iron Chain seems closer to what it should be for a 0.67 listed activation w/ the input delay added. I would be inclined to support that result.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Hurricane
Thoughts: Hurricane wound up being a lengthy test as I wanted to see if stacking up debuffs of appropriate types was worth it. Here's Hurricane all by itself, pretty high damage for a mobile wide range aoe.
Power: Hurricane
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Firesnake -> Hurricane
Thoughts: Firesnake seems worth it.
Power: Hurricane
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Demolish -> Firesnake -> Hurricane
Thoughts: Demolish and Firesnake not so much.
Power: Hurricane
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Firesnake -> Hurricane
Thoughts: So this was a thrown out parse, although picking through the data trying to find out what went wrong brought my attention to some faults about Hurricane's split damage. Inspecting the individual hits shows that the crushing portion of Hurricane is at 16% res, which indicates it's not taking into account DUC.
The hits on this one don't add up. The second parse is at 2,638 hits, while this one is at 3,946. The conditions did not change between the two parses. The delay on this one is wrong, it should be .21. How this happened, I'm not sure. What's extra odd is I got this result twice.
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Firesnake -> Typhoon
Thoughts: Based on my findings for Hurricane I decided Firesnake was the optimal debuff choice on this. Pretty good for a cone, was difficult supplying the energy. Although it's a little sad that Hurricane comes pretty darn close to this.
Power: Wind Breath
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Wind Breath
Thoughts: Not much to say about it, although I always found this good for a wolf character. KB adv on it is handy for rage stacking.
Power: Wind Breath
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Demolish -> Wind Breath
Thoughts: Demolish doesn't seem worth it.
Power: Wind Breath
Passive Used: Stormbringer
Rotation: Fire Snake -> Wind Breath
Thoughts: Firesnake didn't add all that much either. Split damage types can be a bit obnoxious when it comes to picking debuffs.
Passive Used: Fiery Form
Rotation: Firesnake -> Vicious Cyclone
Thoughts: You just keep showing up Might Chains.
Power: Fire Breath
Passive Used: Fiery Form
Rotation: Firesnake -> Heat Wave -> Fire Breath
Thoughts: Debuffs really helped this one out. Pretty good damage, but least amount of utility amongst the breath attacks.
Power: Venomous Breath
Passive Used: Fiery Form
Rotation: Firesnake -> Venomous Breath
Thoughts: For all its utility venomous breath does decent damage too. The poison adv + a bleed applicator would likely net more damage.
Power: Frost Breath
Passive Used: Fiery Form
Rotation: Firesnake -> Frost Breath
Thoughts: The only breath attack that has scaling damage based on the maintain time.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
And it would appear that hurricane was hitting the lower targets, good catch.
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Ebon Rift
Thoughts: This power does not trigger concentration. I was using Lifedrain to maintain concentration when Rift was on cooldown, which has been cut from the log. Like all 'pet' powers DUC does not work with this. Interesting that Vengeful Shadows can crit, definitely better than R3 of this power.
Power: Ebon Ruin
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Ebon Ruin
Thoughts: About where I expected it to fall.
Power: Ebon Ruin
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Ebon Ruin
Thoughts: Not really ideal and under normal circumstances would likely drop your damage (frankly it's not worth it under ideal circumstances), but placing it up here since it's the only worthwhile dimensional debuff.
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Shadow Embrace
Thoughts: Back in the day Shadow Embrace could knock cosmics. This was really annoying in Teleios Tower when someone would knock the Ultimate Mind into the water.
Power: Shadow Embrace
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Shadow Embrace
Thoughts: With the debuff.
Power: Lifedrain
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Lifedrain
Thoughts: Not bad damage for a power that has strong healing output.
Power: Lifedrain
Passive Used: Shadow Form
Rotation: Ego Blade Breech -> Lifedrain
Thoughts: With the debuff.
Thanks for the added tests.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Passive Used: Kinetic Manipulation
Rotation: Assault Rifle
Thoughts: Pretty good damage.
Power: Gatling Gun
Passive Used: Kinetic Manipulation
Rotation: Gatling Gun
Thoughts: Gatling Gun seems finicky with DUC.
Power: Submachinegun Burst
Passive Used: Kinetic Manipulation
Rotation: Submachinegun Burst
Thoughts: Nothing to note here.
Tried to do Lead Tempest but its massive range makes this difficult with all the boxes around.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Yeah that was discovered a while back by Quasimojo; apparently not all ticks of Gatling Gun (or Storm of Arrows) benefit from -resist as they should:
co-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=280441
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Power: Massacre
Passive Used: Way of the Warrior
Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Massacre
Thoughts: Massacre gaining bleed refresh and Shred gaining Shredded really brought it up in the ranks. I rather wish Unstoppable benefited bleed damage as it would be a nice passive for this. Something to note, bleeding usually does not benefit from DUC. I'm not sure why it sometimes does, but it would appear that refreshing bleeds causes DUC to work even less with them (as seen in the lower logs).
Power: Bite
Passive Used: Way of the Warrior
Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Bite
Thoughts: Very good damage for such a low tier power, sadly Massacre and Shred renders it pretty pointless.
Power: Shred (Penetrating Strikes)
Passive Used: Way of the Warrior
Rotation: Shred Combo
Thoughts: Also very good damage for a power that's dirt cheap in cost.
Power: Frenzy
Passive Used: Way of the Warrior
Rotation: Shred Combo (Penetrating Strikes) -> Frenzy Combo
Thoughts: Its advantage is not on the base layer so it's not worth using. I would say the damage is solid for an aoe, but melee cones are basically single target attacks with how limited they are. Not bad single target damage for how cheap in cost it is.
Passive Used: Unstoppable
Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Haymaker Full Charge x4
Thoughts: That Max Hit. I do find it interesting that it's falling slightly below Massacre, as my old previous tests had it slightly above. Perhaps macroing rotations had something to do with it.
mm, I disagree. The time it takes you to realign and squish the mobs into your cone you could be doing just as well using single target. Melee cones are pretty lackluster when you realize the high damage massive range aoes exist.
Power: Demolish w/below the belt adv
Passive Used: Unstoppable
Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) full charge
Thoughts: R2 w/adv + full charges wound up having the same DPS as R3 taps. R3 taps is way too energy intensive.
Power: Uppercut
Passive Used: Unstoppable
Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Uppercut full charge x6
Thoughts: Solid, but doesn't do much more over just using Demolish.
Power: Beatdown
Passive Used: Unstoppable
Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Beatdown
Thoughts: So there is something very, very strange about Beatdown. I was wondering why the first two hits were coming up very short on crit rate. Turns out the first two hits hit for dual damage, one crushing, and another slashing. The slashing portion cannot crit and does 0 damage.
????????
I'm lost.
The snare/root bonus damage advantage is likely falling on the severity layer as it was giving me no benefit. Or it doesn't work.
Power: Defensive Combo
Passive Used: Unstoppable
Rotation: Demolish (Below the Belt) -> Defensive Combo
Thoughts: Has better utility than Beatdown with the last hit being aoe, adding Defiance and having better threat generation.
Passive Used: Electric Form
Rotation: Particle Accelerator -> Unified Theory -> Laser Sword
Thoughts: Can anyone take away Laser Swords melee crown? Particle Accelerator and Unified Theory are so clunky and boring, but the buff so worth it.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14bzWVjxrwXOphfEpz3zrRctIT41gGQgr0aarrzdUidk/edit#gid=1321718401
(see near the bottom of that page)
Still couldn't figure out what was going on w/ Blindside Blow either, and that was w/ tests using a full build + gear (so heavy into dmg DRs) and on a 'naked' and otherwise un-trained lvl 40.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
This also happens with Energy Storm since the absorbing portion of the power (first phase) deals "Slashing Damage" but the value for it will always be 0. This is when the power is attempting to find any status effects like Clinging Flames, Negative Ions, Chill or containment fields (PFF/Protection Field/Field Surge/Energy Refraction/Mindful Reinforcement/Hardened Particle Matrix etc) to absorb and also apply Infused Energy.
By the way, have you compared Crushing Wave yet? I see you've covered Wind Breath...or have you done so already and I just haven't seen it >_>
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Haven't done crushing wave yet, I'll get back to range powers sometime, was getting bored of the single rotation stuff and decided to wander into melee territory for a bit.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Just a test so far, using concussor, micro munitions and, chest beam and mini gun. The toggle rotation isn't optimal yet due to energy issues. Go figure I can't use dark transfusion. This is also using Targeting Computer, which is something I've been leery of doing.
Does seem to confirm the crit portion doing jack all squat, though.
I can't tell about the severity increase here, but from my testing that was bugged along w/ the crit increase. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the dmgRes boost wasn't working either.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Well, maybe not. I have a heavy blade combo user, and a single blader with the advantage on the combo, and I have gotten into the habit of 'circle strafing' in melee. IE, Run into melee range, start firing the attacks, and rather than standing still, just sort of 'twitch around' my main target. I find that this causes the AI of the other mobs to adjust and move around me, and as a result, the cone winds up hitting quite a lot of them.
Note that I never pause an attack, either, I'm firing full speed the whole time.
The key is, I'm mainly about cutting down the main baddy. Any splash damage is a bonus. But by staying mobile in fights, I'd guess I add an easy 20-30 percent to my overall damage output.
And yes, it's a lot of work, but I'm pretty twitchy when I play, anyway.
Yeah, lol melee.
I recently advocated that they add a 1 point tier4 advantage to all melee attacks that adds a +50 percent base damage boost. That would fix it!
You do know we have melee tank builds staying completely in-set and reaching >4k dps? Adding 50% base damage would increase that to >6k dps. That is more than most ranged sets can reach when going full out on dps.
The problem with ranged dps is the availability of so many overly strong powers on a cooldown, and the trouble cryptic has to keep cross-set synergies under control. The spammable ranged powers that are overperforming by themselves, only do so for a few percent.
I know melee needs some help, mostly in coneAoE attacks, but your idea is not going to improve things.
Melee's issues lie in that many encounters in this game are dramatically more difficult for melee.
While parses are proving that some standalone melee attacks are somewhat outperforming range, the reality is range has a lot of powers it can tack on to improve damage...melee not so much.
Because it's more dangerous to be in melee you're going to be spending more time avoiding attacks/not dying...where range has the luxury to sit back and pewpew without having to do much else, which will affect output. Gravitar is a stellar case of this.
Melee cones are bad compared to range aoe, sorry. Too much effort to hit more than one target when range equivalents are outputting just as much damage in a greater aoe. If there was a change I'd like to see for melee cones it would be turning them into pbaoes.
The only problem I have with making all melee AoE pb, is that for lots of them the animations would look a bit silly. But I agree there is probably no other way to make melee AoE work well. There is another side of things, the long range pbAoE are just overperforming, not only compared to melee AoE but also compared to other ranged AoE. PbAoE should just never get anywhere near the dps of targeted AoE, or even some single target attacks, at least when the attack surface is so much bigger.
And I agree, the tack-on powers need a sane damage per invested time, in a freeform game any sort of balance is never going to work well without enforcing things like that.
edit: keep up the good work w/ the tests, either way. I hope ya can run more w/ TC so we can further verify any bugs w/ LockOn. Who knows, maybe we could push to get that changed/fixed, if so?
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Well, okay.
1) Kaizerin has posted ranged builds that hit 8k dps. Hard Frost and Fire Snake is a helluva thing.
2) The designers of the game state in the game materials that melee does more damage than ranged, to make up for the increased risk of being in melee combat. This is currently incorrect.
So when you say melee builds could hit 6K, you're right! And this is what's SUPPOSED to be happening, according to the Devs of the game.
Melee needs a boost, or ranged needs to get trimmed back. Since nobody likes it when ranged attacks get trimmed back, the logical other choice is....