Simple Solution for Piercing Damage

tacobeast94 · October 2016

I play a gf and an hr, so I see both sides of the fence when it comes to the piecing damage of the ranger. I also PvE a lot and think that side of the game has greatly improved for rangers who want to spec for a build outside of Trapper. The recent changes and influx of combat rangers in PvP has a lot of people crying for elaborate nerfs/reworks that cater to both PvP and PvE. Of course, learn and adapt is always my go to when major changes come through.

However, I believe a solution can be simple. Currently, tenacity gives players damage resistance, armor pen resistance, crit strike resistance, and control resistance. Just add another one: "Piecing Damage Resistance".

This way, PvE can be completely unaffected while addressing the pvp side of things.

I'm not saying that this is an issue needing to be fixed. I'm saying that if it is, I believe this is a sensible approach.

trentbail21 · October 2016

Sounds good to me. Something has to be done lol.

Unknown · October 2016

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tacobeast94 · October 2016

@clonkyo1 what do you mean by breaking news from mod 5? Sorry, I just don't understand the reference.

oldbaldyone · October 2016

Things like this are part of the reason I don't pvp, so take my comments with that in mind.

That said, wouldn't being able to resist piercing damage sort of defeat the entire purpose? The feats purpose is to deal unresistable damage. Making something able to resist it seems awkward.

Perhaps something like this:

Melee attacks deal an additional 10/20/30/40/50% damage as Piercing damage. Piercing damage is Physical damage that cannot be resisted or deflected. (Bonus halved versus players.)

2 cents.

rayrdan · October 2016

NO.
I would rather revert that feat rework and give the HR the right weapon damage they deserve. 948 weapon damage for combat hrs is offensive.

tacobeast94 · October 2016

@oldbaldyone that's a pretty simple solution as well. I like it. The main thing I have issue with is when people offer suggestions that would essentially take entire class reworks in order to implement.

I like the kinds of changes that lie on the reasonable end of the spectrum.

icyphish · October 2016

I believe you guys are all talking about HR's piercing damage. Personally I feel if they adjust HR's piercing damage to be based on Post-Mitigated damage instead of Pre-Mitigated damage, then it will be fine. That way HRs will actually stack more Armor Penetration / Power and other offensive stats to actually try to deal more damage instead of just stacking on CRIT for big Pre-mitigated damage and relay all the damage on Piercing Blade.

BiS HR's Plant Growth (+Piercing Blade) damage without external buff is currently able to crit for 130~150k damage, in the coming mod there will be new weapon, and with the higher weapon damage I wont be suprised if they start one shotting people on crit...

elu · October 2016

What if they made deflect impenetrable by piercing dmg? Well, now that I think of it, that would further give the TR more survivability... nvm

bittynation · October 2016

icyphish said:
BiS HR's Plant Growth (+Piercing Blade) damage without external buff is currently able to crit for 130~150k damage, in the coming mod there will be new weapon, and with the higher weapon damage I wont be suprised if they start one shotting people on crit...

Get real. That kind of damage would only happen on a toon without any tenacity!

I'm surprised people haven't figured it out yet. It's not the encounter powers that's doing all the damage.

edit: "deleted explanation"

BTW, HRs piercing damage does get mitigated by some classes and powers, I just haven't spent the time to figure it out yet. Where as I haven't seen a TRs piercing damage get mitiaged.

icyphish · October 2016

Yes that is real, 130～150k damage on a BiS GWF tested with 4.2k tenacity and 3.7k tenacity, and no tenacity does not help mitigate the piercing damage. Feel free to do more testing with combat HRs that knows how to spec their toon, such as The Vigilante, Relixuzz, Minerva, Turtle and so forth （or generally those long time HR players from EoA or Synergy.）

And yes we know the damage comes from Piercing Blade based on Plant Growth's pre-Mitigated Damage with damage stacks such as Long Strider or other class feature damage amplifier and can be further stacked with Fire Wheel... oh and lets not forget the ～75% deflect or 95～100%+ deflect for 5～6 seconds after using a daily...

bittynation · October 2016

If you stand in the red circle for ten seconds sure it can do a lot of damage with all its ticks and procs of piercing, but what kind of idiot does that?

No single hit from an HR can do that kind of damage and that's the way you trying to sell your point.

I run with 33k power, using mount power jumps it to 36k plus hitting the wheel (223% crit severity), there is no single hit that can do that much damage.

Yes, hr piercing can be mitigated by some classes and powers, but not tenacity.

The big damage from HRs comes from procing piercing blade off of blade hurricane. Melee encounter + split strike = 4 strikes + 4 piercing blade strikes. Although if you dodge the at-will all other strikes are 0 damage.

Blade hurricane hits are buffed by 167% (I don't remember exactly) from the original at-will, so the two hits from blade hurricane and piercing blade is much higher than the original at-will.

Split strike appears to be broke because it only procs blade hurricane once for two strikes in the two seconds it's active, where as rapid strike will proc three times for six strikes. Each blade hurricane procs piercing blade. Edit: appears to be an issue with the dummies somehow, because it works and shows up in act when in actual pvp/pve scenarios.

icyphish · October 2016

I shouldn't be the one teaching you how to play HR, but lets try...

Long Strider (self buff 40% damage if I remember correctly...) -> Rod of Imperial Restraint (Traps the target in place for 2 seconds) -> Plant Growth (Piercing Blade) -> Whatever other Encounters/At-Wills the HR has...

and let me give you one more tip... most top HRs are smart enough to wait till GWFs finishes their Unstoppable, then do this combo, so the GWF has zero chance of escaping the whole rotation...

Now care to teach me how to play a GWF and dodge those...

bittynation said:
If you stand in the red circle for ten seconds sure it can do a lot of damage with all its ticks and procs of piercing, but what kind of idiot does that?

No single hit from an HR can do that kind of damage and that's the way you trying to sell your point.

I run with 33k power, using mount power jumps it to 36k plus hitting the wheel (223% crit severity), there is no single hit that can do that much damage.

Yes, hr piercing can be mitigated by some classes and powers, but not tenacity.

The big damage from HRs comes from procing piercing blade off of blade hurricane. Melee encounter + split strike = 4 strikes + 4 piercing blade strikes. Although if you dodge the at-will all other strikes are 0 damage.

Blade hurricane hits are buffed by 167% (I don't remember exactly) from the original at-will, so the two hits from blade hurricane and piercing blade is much higher than the original at-will.

Split strike appears to be broke because it only procs blade hurricane once for two strikes in the two seconds it's active, where as rapid strike will proc three times for six strikes. Each blade hurricane procs piercing blade.

Unknown · October 2016

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emilemo · October 2016

tacobeast94 said:
@clonkyo1 what do you mean by breaking news from mod 5? Sorry, I just don't understand the reference.

He means this whole piercing damage thing and the solutions suggested are old news from back when the devs first HAMSTER up with the ranger and rogue

Also on topic, pretty soon the one class that could laugh in the face of danger.. i mean in the face of rangers will also succumb to piercing blade. Meh

pando83 · October 2016

My 2 cents:

either Icy's idea to calculate piercing damage post-mitigation, or

Piercing damage might add as a "multiplier" to armor penetration, forcing the user to still stack the stat but getting more DRI from it. Would allow the users to stack way less ArP and add more power for more damage in both PvP and PvE.

Example: piercing damage increases ArP stat effect (DRI) by 50%. So let's say 4k ArP= 40% DRI usually. With piercing damage it becomes 60% DRI. And so on.

Considering tenacity adds ArP resistance, piercing damage would help the users to reduce the effect of ArP resistance from tenacity/ counter it. In PvP they would just be able to hit ArP cap way faster and stack more power/recovery/crit.

bittynation · October 2016

What you guys seem to not understand, and probably don't care because GWFs seem to have gotten the butt end of the stick with the HR revisions, is any nerf to piercing damage needs to be coupled with a corresponding buff in burst damage output or the HR goes back to being useless. This is by far not a simple solution. Currently just a one-sided solution that leaves the HR gimped.

tacobeast94 · October 2016

@bittynation I wouldn't go so far as to say that would "gimp" them. They would still have piercing damage and it would still hit hard in pvp. All things considered, the hr isn't the only class that can utilize piecing damage. Allowing tenacity to mitigate some amount of piecing damage (definitely nowhere close to all) just kinda gives players some kind of survivability in those regards.

tacobeast94 · October 2016

@emilemo thanks for clearing that up for me.

divectore · October 2016

icyphish said:

Long Strider (self buff 40% damage if I remember correctly...) -> Rod of Imperial Restraint (Traps the target in place for 2 seconds) -> Plant Growth (Piercing Blade) -> Whatever other Encounters/At-Wills the HR has...

and let me give you one more tip... most top HRs are smart enough to wait till GWFs finishes their Unstoppable, then do this combo, so the GWF has zero chance of escaping the whole rotation...

Now care to teach me how to play a GWF and dodge those...

First, i like how people always try to put the best of a class like if you could use them all at once, look, you can't use pathfinder's action (deflection when daily is used) lone wolf and "another damage class feature" at once, and that damage feature would be aspect of the serpent which is a single use power, and increases damage for 24%, only trapper can fully use that, because after melee use, you won't be getting the stacks till end of combat.
Now longstrider's shot and why is not so much used in pvp: It requires the enemiy to be 30 feat away (this means it's almost a single use power as well, unless fighting a ranged class which keep it's distance), is a 3 seconds buff with a 12 seconds cooldown, it's melee instance is useless unless the enemy it's standing still and your allies are attacking it.
Against smart BiS players, when they see i throw a longstrider's shot from distance they just move away a little, just enough to not use my encounter in time.

As i say before, my way to fix Piercing Blades, is by changing it to be like this: "You deal 50% additional damage, half of this damage is piercing damage"
This would make lesser to no changes for pve, but for pvp, this would be a 50% nerf. Not a ground nerf, but neither a broken power like SE, i think both HR and the rest of player would be ok with it.

santralafax · October 2016

I see a lot of good options here. I like the idea of a Piercing Damage Resistance as part of Tenacity. Another option would be a stackable stat Piercing Damage Resistance--though I don't think i would be better than the tenacity option. I also like IcyPhish's concept, though I would have to see how the numbers work.

Of course, I doubt there will be anything done in the near-term--we're just making long-term suggestions. SE has been like it is for quite a number of mods, ie.

sh00termcl0vin · October 2016

The problem with piercing blades isn't really the piercing damage per se, but the way flurry works. GWFs get the worst of it though because they don't even get an immunity frame from sprint like warlocks currently do, and have to soak the full damage from flurry. I think two things need to happen to fix this:

1. Reduce the bonus damage from flurry a bit to brings combat HRs back to being more in line with other burst DPS.

2. Give GWFs a resist to piercing damage tied to unstoppable. Say 30% resistance to piercing damage (just an example may be a bit too high) to match the normal DR.

Also HR trapper roots going through elven seems to be a bit much as well. Either reduce the duration or make them respect elven battle enchants again. A bump in trapper damage a bit would be a good compensation for changing this.

Unknown · October 2016

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mamalion1234 · October 2016

IN mod 10.5 or 11 if you prefer you can see clear the answer to the piercing damage.
HORN of valhalla is -15% incoming damage( well after the 5 hit from the same target but still first hit is -3% incoming damage)
weapon set when you dodge -10% incoming damage.
feytouch is -18% incoming damage against the debuffed targets up to 3.
forghammer of gond you get half damage for 5 seconds.
champions banner in the area for 30 seconds any foe deals -8% damage
same for defender banner as the champions banner.
sigil of great weapon fighter 6% buff and 6 % reduce incoming damage up to 14% based how many you hit with the artifact power.

thanks.

Unknown · October 2016

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assassin274 · October 2016

Best solution = take piercing damage out the game.... I see no point in it .I hope the devs get 1 shotted by a tr or 1 rotated by a hr

Unknown · October 2016

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lirithiel · October 2016

When Amenar (miss you bro) first announced PB was being changed back to how it worked when they originally introduced the feat, Sandy pointed out that the new change would effectively be a nerf to pve, whereas post mitigation damage would actually increase HR damage in pve. Dunno how it works personally but I take her word for it (she has a brain for that sort of stuff). Problem is that having PB doing post-mitigated damage means Combat is back to being useless in pvp again.

Personally I think they should just rework both Piercing Blade and Shocking Execution to something else other than piercing damage, which has caused endless problems since they came up with that 'brilliant idea' BUT we all know they won't do that.

Btw @rayrdan they are increasing HR bow and blade damage as well as for TR weapons in Mod 10.5 \o/

ajlir · October 2016

lirithiel said:
When Amenar (miss you bro) first announced PB was being changed back to how it worked when they originally introduced the feat, Sandy pointed out that the new change would effectively be a nerf to pve, whereas post mitigation damage would actually increase HR damage in pve. Dunno how it works personally but I take her word for it (she has a brain for that sort of stuff). Problem is that having PB doing post-mitigated damage means Combat is back to being useless in pvp again.

Personally I think they should just rework both Piercing Blade and Shocking Execution to something else other than piercing damage, which has caused endless problems since they came up with that 'brilliant idea' BUT we all know they won't do that.

Btw @rayrdan they are increasing HR bow and blade damage as well as for TR weapons in Mod 10.5 \o/

I don't know about that. They only say stats, not weapon damage.

lirithiel · October 2016

ajlir#7970 said:

lirithiel said:
When Amenar (miss you bro) first announced PB was being changed back to how it worked when they originally introduced the feat, Sandy pointed out that the new change would effectively be a nerf to pve, whereas post mitigation damage would actually increase HR damage in pve. Dunno how it works personally but I take her word for it (she has a brain for that sort of stuff). Problem is that having PB doing post-mitigated damage means Combat is back to being useless in pvp again.

Personally I think they should just rework both Piercing Blade and Shocking Execution to something else other than piercing damage, which has caused endless problems since they came up with that 'brilliant idea' BUT we all know they won't do that.

Btw @rayrdan they are increasing HR bow and blade damage as well as for TR weapons in Mod 10.5 \o/
I don't know about that. They only say stats, not weapon damage.

Ah phooey I read it wrong

Was going by @morenthar's title on the subject in general discussion.

Unknown · October 2016

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Simple Solution for Piercing Damage

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