MirrorDarkly
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Posts posted by MirrorDarkly
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49 minutes ago, Awilix said:
I played with the set some more!
I (finally) noticed that
Shifting Tides can also be targeted on allies, which made it more constant and useful, but that brought up another observation. Wellspring has a relatively short recharge, especially once enhanced, making the fact that it despawns after a while a lot more of an annoyance than an obvious cost of a power. Is there any 'value' to making it despawn instead of keeping around indefinitely like many pets do? Especially considering its negative threat, it was extremely rare for the thing to ever die. The only effect appeared to be instant annoyance with having to retoggle shifting tides.
Letting Wellspring/Barrier Reef (crosses fingers for name change) not de-spawn would be a huge quality of life improvement for the set.
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I've noticed that the END costs are inconstant across ATs in a non-standard way. Normally MMs pay an endurance tax, where as currently they are mostly the same with only Toroidal Bubble costing MMs more and Shifting Tides actually costing them less.
Marine Affinity end costs (taken from character creation screens)
Shoal Rush
MM: 10.40
Cor: 10.40
Def: 10.40
Soothing Wave
MM: 13.52
Cor: 13.52
Def: 13.52
Toroidal Bubble
MM: 10.00
Cor: 8.00
Def: 8.00
Whitecap
MM: 26.10
Cor: 26.10
Def: 26.10
Tide Pool
MM: 13.00
Cor: 13.00
Def: 13.00
Brine
MM: 7.00
Cor: 7.00
Def: 7.00
Shifting Tides
MM: 0.60/sec
Cor: 0.78/sec
Def: 0.78/sec
Wellspring
MM: 25.00
Cor: 25.00
Def: 25.00
Power of the Deep
MM: 26.00
Cor: 26.00
Def: 26.00-
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Did some playing around with Brine and the power analyzer. The -HP is an interesting feature but it doesn't seem like it will be very significant against an AV or GM unless you have a lot of characters stacking the power. It may be more noticeable vs bosses and EB which have much lower hp pools. Given the high recharge and single target nature of the power I'll probably take it but just keep the base slot and use it mainly for the 30 sec, decaying -Res buff.
All values are defender at lv 50.
-267.72 hp base with a 1 minute duration and recharge time.
It is affected by the purple patch/level differences, but not by AV resistance. The -hp effect does stack with itself.
So against a lv +3 AV you can expect to see -174 hp per hit, which, I think, will reduce their regeneration by roughly 0.5%. You can get that up to around 1% per cast if you slot it for +100% healing and likely stack it 2-4 times depending on your recharge and miss chance.
One thing I'm really noticing about this set is that it is very hard to increase its effectiveness in significant ways through slotting. The things it's best at you can't enhance and the things you can enhance have low enough values that you don't get great return on slotting them.
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Whitecap seems to be fairly weak compared to other AoE resistance debuffs.
It gives the "standard" -30% (defender values) but half of that is over a smaller area and drops off after about 20 seconds. Also, I used a power analyzer to confirm that it cannot stack with itself and while leaping in is awesome it makes the power significantly more dangerous to use in many situations. Consider perhaps allowing the half that lasts the full 40 seconds to stack and/or giving it a short but powerful (resistance + mez resistance) or defense self buff to make it less suicidal to use.
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So on a defender you can consistently apply -60%* damage across a fairly large area, between Soothing Wave (-15%), Tide Pool (-30%) and Tide Pool: Frenzied/Rough Waters (-15%). And you can give out close to +20% resistance to all damage types by enhancing Toroidal Bubble. All together that is fairly significant protection but it also requires stacking a number of effects and having enemies defeated in your Tide Pool.
I wonder if allowing Shoal Rush to proc Frenzied/Rough Waters if used on an enemy in the Tide Pool would make the set feel more reliable and impactful?
*On even con enemies. The purple patch reduces that significantly on higher level foes which might also be a reason the set feels less impactful, especially since unlike -to hit there is no slotting you can do to pull the numbers back up.
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Took a short break from leveling to test out some other ATs. Two notes about Tide Pool.
1. Could it please not spam the combat log with "makes enemy wet" messages?
2. Tide Pool: Rough Waters (which I assume is the knockdown part of the frenzied mechanic?) misses constantly against higher level foes but the power doesn't take Acc enhancements. Something should probably change there.
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Finished the King's Row Skull arc, upping my difficulty to +0/x3 starting with the mission where you first fight the Family's goons. Morana stalemated me as an AV at level 16, every time I'd get her down to around half health she'd use Dark Regen to go back to full health. Went back and redid the mission with her as an EB and it was an easy win. I have been able to solo her as an AV with other MM support sets (Dark, Cold, Rad) so it's keeping with the theme of "good but not as powerful as some other sets" at these levels.
Went back to AVs for the Veles fight. Started the mission at lv 17, leveled up part way through and beat him the first time without leaving to train. Took a while and a fair amount of resummoning defeated thugs, but Toroidal Bubbles was enough to keep my end manageable which is a huge plus for the set.
Tide Pool: Is a really fun power. It looks good, the sound effect is nice, it's easy to use and the Frenzy effect is entertaining. I do notice the difference fighting in it but It doesn't feel game changing and I'm not sure if there is any fight I where it made the difference between victory and defeat. Which seems to be how I'm feeling about almost every power so far besides maybe the heal and bubbles (having some help with END early really lets me keep going where other sets might need to rest or be addicted to blues). Also I'd love to know the debuff values, I assume the +/- damage are mirrors of each other but that's just a guess and the slow is ?? (but significantly better than Shoal).
Speaking of....
Shoal Rush: Now that I have Tide's, Shoal seems like much more of a skip power unless I want to slot it full of procs. It would be nice if it did a little something more to justify taking it for it's own sake. It kind of feels like two secondary effects of say Rad and Ice blast AoE's combined with none of the damage.
Now on to the Faultline arc!
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On 7/6/2024 at 4:08 PM, Shin Magmus said:
Wellspring's stat buffs have their own name in-game, which is listed as "Barrier Reef". That's both a more clever name and a more thematic one, as Wellspring grants Absorb and Defense buffs. It's basically Force Fielding you. Was this power called Barrier Reef at some point and you guys changed it? Change it back if so: Barrier Reef is genius.
Agreed. Barrier Reef is a MUCH better name and the power should be called the same thing as the buff icon.
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I've been running a Thugs/Marine MM, leveling up solo through missions. I went AP 1-8 and just finished the first Skull arc in King's Row, taking down Chernobog at level 12. My settings are yes to bosses and AVs, +0/x2.
So far the set has been fun but middle of the road in power (certainly no cold, dark or rad at this stage). The powers tend to do a lot of things but none of them exceptionally well which I feel is the intent at this level and I can see how they whole package is likely to be extraordinarily effective, but I'm not there yet.
Thoughts on the powers I have tried:
Shoal Rush: Takes procs well, but as noted above is not accepting slow sets or enhancements. The thing about this power is that it slows movement but not recharge so it doesn't help keep me alive nearly as well as say Snow Storm would, but for its cost and recharge seems okay.
Soothing Wave: Basic cone heal, not great healing output but still much better than nothing. Being a cone kind of conflicts with what the rest of the set wants me to be doing but it has been manageable. The damage debuff is small enough that I don't notice it.
Toroidal Bubble: On paper this looks great but the one minute recharge/duration is kind of a pain when I don't have any global recharge or slots to spare bringing it down. The base values are not high enough that it makes a huge difference by itself but I'll never say no to 10% damage reduction plus some help with endurance. I imagine at higher levels I'll really appreciate the end resistance too. Also, having increased jump height but not speed is surprisingly effective at making it feel like I'm floating at times.
Whitecap: This just feels awesome and the set became 10x more enjoyable when I unlocked it. Again at this level Tar Patch is probably more practical but jumping in and knocking everything prone is bad ass. Also seems to take procs very well and I could see it eventually becoming a powerhouse.
Given how much trouble I had with the two bosses at the end of the ambush mission was surprised that I was able to solo Chernobog as an AV so I certainly can't say it is underpowered in the early game. But I've also done that with quite a few MM (and a few other characters) and it had a rougher time than with ones that uses Dark, Cold or Rad. As of now I'd give it a B- for effectiveness and a C for fun pre Whitecap rising to an A after I got that power.
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Shoal Rush is listed as taking Slow Movement sets in the Manage Enhancements screen but does not take them or basic slow enchantments.
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Gun drone might be very nice for Storm helping to tank while you get out your ground targets. But my big hang-up with Storm/Devices is how badly Targeting Drone performs with Storm.
If you look at the CoD info you'll see targeting drone is a +18.5% to hit and a +20% damage buff that is reapplied every .6/.75 seconds so neither Storm Cell or Cat5 will see an meaningful benefit from that part of the power. What's worse (in my mind) is that the separate +60% damage buff only lasts for .75 seconds and stops applying once you enter combat. Meaning you'll have to use another attack to open up combat other than Cat5 (or any other sudo pet) if you ever want to to make use of that bonus.
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Of those I would personally go with Temporal. The extra recharge should help in getting out Cat5 significantly and for me Storm Blast is all about that power.
That being said, if you like controlled chaos you might want to consider Storm/Fire/Fire. The DoT aura's add extra passive damage leaving you free to call down lightning and thunder. I made one on the test server when the set was in beta and it was a lot of fun.
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Very exciting and honestly not something I ever expected to have happen! Looking forward to what the new year brings. 😄
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On 10/4/2023 at 11:42 AM, SeraphimKensai said:
Any speedster. I mean Wally West perceives Attoseconds so a punch to him is like taking a whole year for it to reach it's destination.
More like a billion+ of years of relative time (assuming the punch took a fraction of a second).
Approximently as many attoseconds pass in one second as seconds have passed since the big bang.
Even for comics I've always had a hard time buying that one...
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1 hour ago, Rudra said:
Very good point about the Build Up. Just checked to verify, and there are exactly two differences between Stalker Staff Fighting and Scrapper/Tanker/Brute Staff Fighting. Stalkers give up the taunt for Placate, and more importantly, they give up Staff Mastery for Build Up. That's it. The powers available are the exact same otherwise.
(Edit: It's also telling that the author says Scrapper Staff Fighting is the worst of them all while Stalker is the best of them all, when Scrapper Staff Fighting does more damage by itself than Stalker Staff Fighting. For instance, Sky Splitter has a base starting damage before adding in the attack's later damage or the chance to inflict damage of 76.7421 damage on a Stalker, but 86.3349 damage on a Scrapper. And the Scrapper's add on damage, both guaranteed and chance for, are higher than the Stalker's.)
You are missing that they get an Assasin Stike for a hard hitting single target as well (giving up the second cone I think). Also they also get Forn of the Body for free, they just can't switch to the other two.
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6 hours ago, Rudra said:
I'll let @Ston handle figuring out attack chain DPS. I'm not inclined to tackle something that complex. However, this still discounts what other things those powers do. Without any of the form stances factored in, which is an additional complication I am disinclined to factor in, just the basic abilities of each of Staff Fighting's attacks, you have a constant stream of knockups, knockdowns, stuns, defense reductions, personal defense buff, movement buff for all movement types, chance for bonus damage to pets, minions, swarms, and small mobs; a ranged attack, and immobilize; while still maintaining comparable DPS per power to War Mace. (Better even on 4 powers. 5 if you factor that Serpent's Reach is a ranged attack being compared to a melee attack, and still does nearly the same DPS.)
I don't look at pylon times. I don't look at Trapdoor times. I'm not sure about the Trapdoor test, but pylons only look at the character's ability to inflict massive amounts of damage in as little time as possible. It does not look at anything else the character can do. Get yourself a pocket Empath to hang nearby and keep you alive while you wail on the pylon. (Or make a Tanker and just tank it while you wail on it.) That is just straight damage. Staff Fighting is a solid set. It may not be the highest damage set, but they can't all be the highest damage set. It may even be the lowest damage set, I don't know. I am not inclined to go through all the power sets across Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers to see if it is. That doesn't make it a bad set. That doesn't even make it a weak set. The more any given power does, the less damage it will do. That is by design. And Staff Fighting does a lot. The only reason I don't much play Staff Fighting characters? Is because I tend to get bored playing my staff characters.
If Staff Fighting is under-powered, not looking at just DPS here, looking at set performance overall, then the devs will address it. However, I don't see anything wrong with Staff Fighting's DPS.
(Edit: There is also the consideration, at least in my book, that players are using Form of the Mind and the proposal would take that away to replace it with a different power. Especially since Perfection of the Mind already grants +51.8009 psi damage to Sky Splitter and Guarded Spin isn't a finisher, but is a charge builder.)
You raise many good point which I'd like to think my idea took into account. I'm going to highlight some and give my thoughts on why I think this is a reasonable proposal.
I'm using pylon and trapdoor times as evidence for adjusting the set but they are not the reason. The main thing that stands out to me as problems is that for two ATs the optimal ST rotation ignores both the core mechanics of the set and any of the set's attacks you'd pick up after level two. The other two ATs are Stalker where the set ranks in the low middle and would not be changed with this proposal and Scrapper where it is dead last in the ranking so I feel safe that raising it up a little would not harm the game or lead to power creep.
Nothing in my proposal changes Guarded Spin, which as you note builds stacks. And again I don't see why it would need to be changed.? The defense bonus is not out of line with the ones other sets offer that do better ST damage and have better trapdoor clear times. People think if Staff as a defensive and AoE focused set but there are actually several sets that outshine it in both of those areas. Again just using the brute numbers MA, TW and Katana all have attacks that buff your defense and beat it in both pylon and trapdoor times with MA and TW being at or near the top of both rankings.
As for people who already use Form of the Mind I'm not advocating they lose much and perhaps they wouldn't need to lose anything honestly. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most likely people in FotM are doing so for the recharge bonus the stacks give you before they are spent, which I'm not saying should change. The reason I'm advocating for buffing FotM specifically is for the tradeoff you already make using it. Being in FotM already locks you out of the resist bonus and -resist debuff FotB generates and the sustain FotS grants.
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Lets look at actual attack chains, which of course are highly sensitive to recharge. I am going to use the ones posted by Ston since I have no reason to suspect they are not honest attempts to make the best possible single target attack chains for each set with all other variables being as equal as possible. Also I'm using brute numbers which was the second best overall showing. Stalkers (#1) are outliers with several unique things about the set and that would not be affected by my purposed change.
The Staff attack chain as an unenhanced damage of about 39.5 DPS.
(60.9 + 73.4 + 55.0 + 35.0)/(1.848 + 1.32 + 1.32 + 1.188*)
War Mace's attack chain produces about 51.2 DPS.
(121.7 + 73.4 + 95 + 81.7)/(1.452 + 1.32 + 2.508 + 1.98)
So War Mace second per second will put out almost 30% more damage before any other factors such as procs, secondary effects etc. Now again I am not saying there are not advantages to Staff. I'm only suggesting that the least (I believe) used stance be adjusted so there is less of a difference in the DPS at the cost of sacrificing some of the set's utility if you choose to be in that stance. If you remain in Body or Soul you would see no changes at all.
*I used arcanatime since that is what you experience in the game.
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Yes of course recharge matters some but activation time is by far the most significant "time cost" after you have enough attacks to make a gapless rotation. Also recharge can be reduced significantly which heavily favors powers with low animation time but long recharge times.
There is a reason War Mace takes nearly 60% longer to take down a plyon in the test data I linked earlier.
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I don't understand what you're doing for the DPS of each attack, it seems like damage/(cast time + recharge) but unless you're standing around waiting for attacks to recharge its the damage/cast time that determines each attacks value to your overall DPS.
So using your numbers, Clobber has a base damage per activation of 148.52 (182.6796/1.23) where as Serpent's Reach has a dpa of 63.62 (112.6107/1.77).
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2 hours ago, Luminara said:
Tests which eschew the use of 7 of the 9 powers in a set aren't an evaluation of the set, by any measure.
All three forms already add damage to Sky Splitter, and damage and secondary effects to Eye of the Storm, at 3 stacks.
As Guarded Spin currently buffs Lethal and Melee Defense, balance would necessitate moving Guarded's effects to Eye if Eye's effects were moved to Guarded, or removing the Defense buff entirely, either of which would be shitastic. No, thank you.
That is exactly my point, most of the powers in the set are underperforming to the point that pool powers are better from a damage perspective. So I'm floating the idea of making one stance where using the core mechanic increases damage enough that it outperforms using mostly pool attacks and just using a few quick attacks to build FotB stacks and never spend them (trading the utility in that form only for more damage in that form only).
As you said the three form do buff the damage of EotS and SS, along with providing other benefits, but its such a small buff that it is more single target damage just to skip the majority of the set (as well as being average to below average AoE damage despite having a large number of AoE attacks). I see that as undesirable.
As for Guarded Spin why would that need to be adjusted? Other sets such as Katana have very similar powers and overall put out more damage. However if it was for some reason to much to allow Guarded Spin to keep the +11.25% bonus to Melee and Lethal defense then the obvious fix would be to remove or lower it only when you're in Perfection of the Mind. But again I don't see why that would be needed since the Katana version gives +15% to those same defenses (comparing Brute numbers here).
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Look it's another staff idea.....
So it's no secret that outside of the Stalker staff does poor damage, being at or near the bottom in both single target and trapdoor clear times, and that at least for Tanks and Brute you're better off shoving as many pool attacks in your single target chain as you can (seriously it's use both your level 1 attacks and pool picks) than using the later attacks.
Now in theory this was probably intended to be balanced by the defensive and utility bonuses the set provides but given how easy it is to get those in IOs that is often not worth the trade off. So I was wondering how people would feel about changing Perfection for the Mind to a stance that actually increases the damage of Sky Splitter and Guardian Spin (maybe add strong Psi DoT's to each at 3 stacks) to the point that they would be competitive for their very long animation times? That would leave you with the choice of Body which is currently the most used stance still offering a modest overall damage increase plus survival bonus, Soul which some people use for the sustain and Mind which would be more damage/finishing move focused in exchange for losing much of the sets utility.
Since Stalkers don't get to change stances you wouldn't have to worry about this making the version of the set which currently does the best damage too powerful by accident. It would also reward people who use the build stacks and spend them mechanic which was clearly the intent of the set as opposed to the current situation where you actually do the most damage by building three stacks of body and then *not using it* while still allowing for that playstyle if you enjoy it.
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Storm Blast is what finally broke my alt-itis. I find it immensely satisfying when Cat5 drops and lightning starts flying everywhere.
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2 hours ago, biostem said:
Oh no doubt. My guess, though, would be that the most likely implementation would be one where the clouds are a generic grey/white and only the lightning takes the color you select - they can "bake in" other colors to get around the limitation...
I would be fine with that. But if that is the case and if it's even seen as a reasonable project by the devs it should be added as new aura so that people who are using the existing one still can.
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2 hours ago, biostem said:
I don't think auras work off of the same system as powers, even if some of the effects look similar - AFAIK, all auras only accept 1 color. Compare the leaves aura to how you can color the nature powers...
I would not be surprised if that is true and if it is time consuming to change I don't think it should be a priority. But if it's not difficult it would make that aura in particular many times more useful.
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Focused Feedback: Marine Affinity
in [Open Beta] Focused Feedback
Posted · Edited by MirrorDarkly
I'm gong to skip ahead to talk about Power of the Deep. It's an ability that I suspect will be most apricated by high level "meta" characters that already have their defense and/or resist in place but barring a few sets likely won't have max HP or Regen as well as Master Minds for obvious reasons.
On my test lv 50 Defender I can give out +615 max hp plus about +460% regen on a near* perma bases plus that amount again that decays over 30 seconds (and some max end and range). Now that won't turn a glass cannon into a tank but it will increase the sustain and survivability of most characters that already have strong defenses.
However it feels very odd to have this huge impressive animation for a buff, especially one that's not incredibly likely to turn an eminent defeat into a victory. And if you're running with a team that hasn't got their defenses sorted it not going to be nearly as helpful.
I know it is unlikely at this stage but what I'd love to see is the decaying 30 second buffs removed and replaced with a more immediate, and dramatic, effect that would then allow the regen some time to work. Say it knocks down enemies in the area and applies a very strong 10-15 second -Recharge, -Speed, and -Damage effect (auto hit & unenhanceable to prevent it from becoming a proc bomb but also keep it relevant against high level foes). All of that is keeping with the theme of the set, and imo much more dramatic, interesting and likely to create satisfying "I just changed the tide of battle" moments.
*With an unplanned build, so I likely would get perma or just a few seconds off in an actual character.
Edit: Also I am not sure if this in intended, but Power Boost from the Epic Soul PP is not affecting either the +Max HP or the Reg the power grants even though it has +healing. It does boost +Max End and I'm not sure about the range component.