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maatmons
Posts: 347 Arc User1
As far as I can tell, I should only be capable of reaching one stack of defiant. Sometimes though, I find myself with two. Even more rarely, I get to three stacks. I've never gone past that. Can anyone tell me where the extra stacks are coming from? Here's my build. I'm level 14 but haven't decided on my 6th power yet, and I have three advantage points unspent.
PowerHouse (Link to this build)
Name:
Archetype: Freeform
Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Constitution (Secondary)
Level 15:
Talents:
Level 1: The Master
Level 6: Physical Conditioning
Level 9: Mighty
Level 12: Enduring
Level 15:
Level 18:
Level 21:
Powers:
Level 1: Clobber
Level 1: Defensive Combo (Rank 2)
Level 6: Mighty Leap
Level 8: Regeneration (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Form of the Tempest
Level 14:
Level 17:
Level 20:
Level 23:
Level 26:
Level 29:
Level 32:
Level 35:
Level 38:
Travel Powers:
Level 6: Acrobatics
Level 35:
Specializations:
Strength: Physical Peak (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
PowerHouse (Link to this build)
Name:
Archetype: Freeform
Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Constitution (Secondary)
Level 15:
Talents:
Level 1: The Master
Level 6: Physical Conditioning
Level 9: Mighty
Level 12: Enduring
Level 15:
Level 18:
Level 21:
Powers:
Level 1: Clobber
Level 1: Defensive Combo (Rank 2)
Level 6: Mighty Leap
Level 8: Regeneration (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Form of the Tempest
Level 14:
Level 17:
Level 20:
Level 23:
Level 26:
Level 29:
Level 32:
Level 35:
Level 38:
Travel Powers:
Level 6: Acrobatics
Level 35:
Specializations:
Strength: Physical Peak (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
While on one hand I guess I should be happy there is at least some work being done on powers... but why this? There are so many things that are much worse. Start with the worst, like AD/AO cycling and outliers, "tack-on" attacks, heal stacking, debuffs (require investments), and work your way down from there.
When I claim something is overperforming (or in this case question why a not so OP power like DC gets "fixed") I can, and have, backed that up with numbers. But of course those are often conveniently ignored.
So try being a little more concrete, how exactly will only improving AI change anything for builds that do not have any trouble staying alive on anything non-frosticus, while doing near top end dps?
And if you can think of something, how would it not change things at least as much for weaker builds? Ending up with at the same build-performance discrepancies we have now, if not worse.
If you can't do that, please stop repeating your AI-improvement-instead-of-power-balance talk.
And also just look at pvp for a good example where (A)I has been tested and it shows clearly builds (power/mechanic balance) are much more important than AI when considering balance in CO.
In the end it would kinda be nice for BOTH things to happen but, IMO, balance must come 1st to provide more build diversity and set a proper baseline from which to design new content challenge levels...and those meaningful enemies.
2. Aiqa: Numbaz R Hard.
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
I'm curious, what do you mean?
Have you posted any analysis on this, or could you elaborate?
Fully agreed on both points.
Over the years I've posted a lot about these things, but not in one convenient writeup.
Keep in mind that those points were not meant to be comprehensive, just what came to my mind while writing that sentence.
But to elaborate a "little".
Firstly people (almost) always want to "win", so if option A is obviously stronger than B, by far most people will pick option A.
If you care about the theme of your build, in CO this conflicts strongly with the idea "be the hero you want to be".
My suggestions are always targeted at being able to make theme builds, or in-set builds, that are not completely outpaced by cherrypicked top-end builds, or better performing sets.
And also to limit things that remove any challenge from CO, or remove the need to make meaningful choices (as opposed to obvious top performance choices).
So on to those points.
AD/AO cycling and outliers
I think the cycling part is fairly obvious.
I've made a threat about that myself.
http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=256811
But so have many others.
https://www.google.nl/search?q=AD+AO+cycling+site:co-forum.perfectworld.com
The idea behind these powers is of course that they give a short but significant boost to whatever they're supposed to boost.
That used to be fine-ish when there wasn't so much cooldown reduction available (and unbreakable was broken
But since on alert you can fairly easily have one AD and one AO active (nearly) permanent.
If you want numbers on the performance on active defenses you can see what MD does in the spreadsheet in my sig, and since unbreakable does not interact with other mechanics you can just look at the power description.
Active offense powers have a few problems, one is the cycling part, and another is there are one or two (depending on build and situation) that are hugely stronger than the others.
Those are of course ego surge, or actually nimble mind, and ascension.
For a rough estimate of nimble mind performance:
I'll have to make a few assumptions to make things doable.
That does mean you can't use these numbers as any precise way to figure out in-game numbers, but for comparing it works well enough (for me).
- I'm ignoring damage strength, since that makes any rough example impossible, if you want to know the effectiveness of that part you can test that yourself
- I'm not counting the ego bonus and cost reduction
- I'm applying these to a build with 30% crit chance, 100% severity, 20% offense damage bonus.
- cooldown is 45 seconds
- I'm setting nimble mind crit chance to 60%, of course this depends on constitution
ego surge r2 + nimble mind
+ 60% crit chance
(+ 50% damage strength)
(+ 80 ego)
15 seconds duration
lock n load r3
+ 9.6% crit chance
(+ 60% damage strength)
(+ 36% cost discount)
18 seconds duration
The overall average damage multiplier without an AO.
(1-0.3)*(1+0.2)+0.3*(1+0.2+1)=1.5
The overall average damage multiplier with ego surge:
(((45-15)/45)*((1-0.3)*(1+0.2)+0.3*(1+0.2+1)))+((15/45)*((1-(0.3+0.6))*(1+0.2)+(0.3+0.6)*(1+0.2+1)))=1.7
The overall damage increase would be 1.7/1.5=1.1333 so 13.33%.
The overall average damage multiplier with lock n load
(((45-18)/45)*((1-0.3)*(1+0.2)+0.3*(1+0.2+1)))+((18/45)*((1-(0.3+0.096))*(1+0.2)+(0.3+0.096)*(1+0.2+1)))=1.5384
The overall damage increase would be 1.5384/1.5=1.0256 so 2.56%.
Of course there is a bit more to it than this, since damage strength (with all its diminishing returns and many sources) does actually exist, and the ego bonus and cost reduction can influence stuff.
But overall this shows pretty well how much better the secondary effect on ego surge performs compared to one of the better non-ego-surge AO's.
The "disadvantage" to nimble mind is supposed to be it's dependency on constitution... like that's a big disadvantage.
Ascension has two problems.
Most often it is used as a AD, giving you effectively 3 AD's (crit boosting AO's do this as well).
And the flight part does not respect any active nttg effect.
So all 'n all (on a build with high constitution) when using ego surge and ascension you'll end up with a lot more damage and survivability than any other two AO's.
Ok this took a bit more time than I intended so I'll try to skip through the others.
"tack-on" attacks
Like I said in Kaizerin's power testing thread, one of the reasons why you can make a build that does 8k dps or so, is powers that do overly high damage for the time you need to invest.
A few examples of those are straving run, mental storm or rimfire.
All those are powers you spend very little time on, but they add a lot of dps, so you can "tack" them on any build you like for a very significant dps boost.
I'm not going to do any examples now. If you really want those I've done that in the past, so good luck searching :biggrin:.
heal stacking
This is a problem since we have a few click heals on a cooldown, it's very similar to the tack-on attacks stuff. But I don't think making all heals heal a similar health per invested time is a good option. Instead I'd like to see a stacking debuff on all the click heals. Meaning if you have BCR or BS active you get a 15% base-heal debuff per active heal, and from conviction a 15% base-heal debuff that lasts for almost the cooldown time on conviction.
debuffs (require investments)
I'm getting a bit tired of writing, so this part could get a little messy.
Resistance debuffs are both to strong and not strong enough.
They are to strong in that you can just pick one on any build (as long as one is available for your damage/attack type) and instantly get big bonus to your overall damage.
This of course means that for the stronger (20% and up) debuffs they are basically a requirement if you want a competing performance.
But as an example, if I have a heavy weapons build I should then use demolish to get a good dps (as far as that goes for HW), which might be very out of theme.
On the other hand we have a debuff like firesnake, which can be made to look more or less in theme for any elemental build (I am aware this is fully subjective), but is a large part of why iceblast/rimefire/straving run can do insanely high damage.
So to change that I think there should be some limits to debuffs. They could/should either be strictly tied do powers that are thematically very close, or they should be generic debuffs that are available in all sets that have a certain damage type, and for either of those options powers would have to be balanced accordingly.
With the investment, and not strong enough, parts I meant this:
If I want to make a build that actually focuses on debuffs that is a bit tricky.
Of course I can cherrypick all the available debuffs in CO, but like I said I don't like that as a requirement.
So what I'd like to see is making all debuffs significantly weaker (which also solves bosses reaching their -resistance cap), but scale with CC strength, manipulator, and maybe some other stuff. Since this would make debuffs stronger than they are now, a debuff resistance might have to be added to bosses.
This whole debuff thing I probably a lot of work, so it might not have been a good idea to add it to a "low hanging fruits" list.