Galaxy Brain
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Posts posted by Galaxy Brain
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7 hours ago, tidge said:
If by "low end" you are referring to low-performing sets: My initial thought would be to help those sets out in a way which doesn't obviously affect them from the PoV of DPS formula (e.g. damage, activation time, recharge), but should improve the QoL of those powers.
How about cutting endurance costs for the under-performing sets? As near as I can tell, it is the all-powerful metric of 'Kill Speed' that determines if a set is 'under performing'. I'm well aware of the available options for improving MaxEnd, EndCost and Recovery... and the relative cost/utility for spending slots to improve each. I don't think that reducing endurance costs across-the-board would do much more than free up a single slot (or alter a few slot choices) on some builds... but freeing some of the build constraints for under-performers by reducing Endurance costs might be an acceptable compromise.
Its not always kill speed. In my mission based tests there was emphasis on consistency and damage mitigation as well that really made a difference over just raw output. For example, Battle Axe was in the top 10 clear times (10th counts!), but bottom 4 in terms of safety so it fared much worse overall when I ran the missions on SO's. Likewise, Energy Melee absolutely dunked on the bosses... but then was slowed down by everything else and did still have safety issues in exchange due to ET.
Vs a Pylon or a Catered Farm your results will vary set to set, but when judged by multiple criteria at once I feel you gain a new perspective. I agree with @nihilii that Psy Melee is actually lacking due to this, especially when you compare it to Energy which does the whole ST damage shtick a bit better.
That said, adding more utility and fun to set rather than just "more dakka" is something I'll always vote for.
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1 hour ago, Solarverse said:
I was waiting on that to pop up. I knew it was coming the very day this thread came along. What took ya? 😛
Im workin! Lol
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43 minutes ago, BrandX said:
I'll have to be honest, the resist end drain and slow resist, seems to be more about "Resist every negative" Double up on QR instead of putting end drain protection. Yes, sappers suck. Some enemies should be problems we go after first. 🙂
Sets should have weaknesses sure, but this is an especially crippling one for a set so reliant on skills with cooldowns. It'd be like an armor set being weak to Lethal Damage with how many random mobs do pack -Rech in the game
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1 hour ago, Bopper said:
It's closed now, but last month this was a topic for the Weekly Discussion if anyone wants to go back through those suggestions.
Specifically, take a gander at @Bopper's post:
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25 minutes ago, chi1701 said:
Why? and what other abilities are you comparing it to? Other than its longer cast time, does more damage, shorter recharge than SS punch.
SS jab and punch are intentionally worse due to being balanced with Rage in mind
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On phone so I can only do a quick response:
Re: AoE sleeps, I feel that each AoE sleep should have a unique perk per control set.
Elec has this with it being a refreshing sleep.
Mind Control iirc is super fast and easy to use.
Others like Flash Freeze and Salt Crystals could use something. Flash Freeze getting "shatter" for damage potential as you break the sleep would be cool. Idk what salt would have but something unique as well would be nice.
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11 hours ago, America's Angel said:
I understand the intention in giving the mobs a split of damage types that reflects the split in the game as a whole. But in real-world play, this isn't how the mobs are encountered. (Psychic damage, for example, isn't found in 6% of every mob in every mission - it's often found in EVERY mob in certain missions.)
Also, standing still and letting enemies hit you doesn't reflect the mitigation provided by certain sets' offensive capabilities.
What might be better is to create eight missions, each one filled with enemies doing a single damage type. And then run each of the armour sets through them using War Mace as the secondary. You could then pull an average survival time across the missions (weighted by damage type frequency in the game world) to determine the real rankings of the armour sets on SOs.
While this is true, there are a lot of nuances.
For one, I don't think there is a set that has more S or L mitigation than the other, so that at least leaves one out. Toxic is also incredibly rare to be "pure" toxic, nor be consistently mitigated for every set. Most SL enemies also tend to have either energy or fire tossed in sparingly as well.
Otherwise that sounds solid.
The lack of active mitigation was done to just gauge the "base level" for the sets. For example, of invuln can just stand there and take a beating, it will be even more unbeatable with knockdown and stuns. Fiery Aura in contrast would probably be comparably the same level of "tough" compared to invuln as the attacks that slip in will be like when I stood there in the crowd, where fire was still able to delete most the mob despite dying. Its worth plotting out tho!
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43 minutes ago, xl8 said:
Ice slick>Heat loss>sleet>Frost breath>Ice Storm. Throw in frostbite for the KB res crowd.
Yes, sleet, breath and storm get proc out, but this AC will have you taking alpha (and the majority of kills) in itrials.
Just saying, there's only 1 ice control power there.
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Hemm was included on SOs, but chains aren't really discussed as there's really only the EB to use it on.
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20 minutes ago, ClawsandEffect said:
It occurs to me that this entire discussion is largely moot when you take into account that players in game will almost always take the path of least resistance.
Even if you remove Incarnate powers from non-Incarnate content, you still won't see all that many people running Incarnate content. I solo my way through the Dark Astoria arcs on all my 50s after they unlock Alpha, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen anyone else in the zone that wasn't on my team (for those times when I can actually play with my wife).
Take away the Incarnate powers and the majority of players will still keep running repeated Council radio missions. Except now they'll be bitching that their Incarnate powers don't work anymore.
This is exactly why I proposed a buff to enemies and rewards be put in tandem with Incarnate changes.
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25 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:
Except with claws, the lack of spin for Stalkers makes me never touch stalkers. The extra recharge on spin and shockwave for brutes/tanks forces me into an attack chain of followup, focus, spin, shockwave rather than the the preferable chain of followup, spin, shockwave that I'm able to use on the scrapper.
Changes made have actually driven me away/lessened my love rather than encouraging exploration.
That is fair, and it an unfortunate example but Im not sure that is HC's fault. What I'd love to see is more like "signature" powers in sets do something a bit extra.
Like what @aetherealmentioned with how Brute/Tank MA has a different effect, as well as Hibernate vs Icy Bastion. (And tbh, outside of that there are not many substantial differences aside from Claws having randomly different stats for non-scrappers... and then Stalkers are their own thing).
There is already a concern of balance due to AT mods and the like (for example, a Dark Melee brute gets kinda shafted by Soul Drain compared to other ATs), so having changes per set per at to address that would be nice. Another example would be Defender Elec Blast which does NOT benefit from Defender mods at all, nor does Defender Fire Blast, making them dubious choices.
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1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:
They don't have to be identical. But in retaining a set's identity, it sure as hell makes things easier to balance.
It does, but even like 1 power being different here or there. Stalkers already get this with the addition of AS giving each set a solid ST attack (hi Elec Melee), and then some AoEs are changed for them only (hi Power Crash). Conversely, Tanker powers could be altered to take advantage of their inherent with clever manipulation of radius / etc, and we already see certain changes with Claws on Tanks/Brutes vs Scrappers in terms of how they behave.
For me, it kind of comes down more to how Tanks/Brutes/Scrappers have nearly 1:1 mirrors of certain sets outside of Taunt/Confront and minor differences here and there. It begs the question of why play an X/ brute over a X/ scrapper, or a Y/ tank over a /Y brute, when if there were slight changes between them it would encourage a bit more exploration.
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22 hours ago, Solarverse said:
For me personally, they should have just put it back the way it was during i5 and added a +Recharge buff to Death Shroud (+Recovery +Regen for the Blaster version to get away from that damn target click ranged fear b.s.) and called it a day.
I truly loved the Teleport version of the Dark Consumption idea that they were tossing around, but they didn't do that because of Stalkers being unable to get that power, even though they could have just added a proc system to turn the Stalker version of Midnight Grasp into an AoE to make up for that to allow for more diversity in the Stalker set and then called it a day.Super side note, but I would looooove to have more sets be very different AT to AT. Why does the Stalker version of a set have to mirror another AT's? Why does the Scrapper, Brute, and Tank versions have to be 1:1 outside inherents?
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As long as we're talking changes:
1) Add more appropriate content for incarnates
Self explanatory, give the super-duper heroes something to chew on. Whether thats new trials and arcs, new enemy groups, new classes of enemy that appear in random missions, etc. Just something to actually leverage that power against. In terms of dev time, brand new content is the hardest so I would opt for "Enhanced Enemies" or "Enhanced Task Forces" as discussed in other threads. How cool would it be to have random bosses be incarnate-level in a mission with incarnates? Or re-running task forces in "Incarnate Mode" where all enemies and challenges are cranked to 11?
1.5) Adjust existing "hard" content to be more worthwhile
Part of the issue is that many folks are taking a sledge hammer to a thumb tack when it comes to Incarnates vs "normal" content, compounded by how council missions are the same reward as say a Carnie + Malta map for 1/10th the risk. This goes hand in hand with point 1 where new, hard content should be worth it to run as opposed to council maps 4568475 times, and should be applied to existing content for a win-win. Hell, revamp the shadow shard to an incarnate area for all factions!
2) An incarnate by itself is fine, its when they team up it gets weird
My hot take here is that the incarnate system as-is works fine.... solo or with a small team... or if there are only 1-2 incarnates on the team. Where it gets mega steamroll-y is when you have many incarnates working together. Yes, the comparison of Judgement to a Blaster Nuke is valid... but you often do not have 8 or more blasters cycling nukes that can hit 40 or so targets each for the same damage, which is what Judgement spam can do. Likewise, support powers get overshadowed not only by IO's, but by even DPS classes getting Destiny for the same values that do wonders across wide areas. On top of that, there can be a bunch of monstrously strong pets rolling through content along with the incarnates. I feel strongly that the issue is more like each person becomes a force multiplier for themselves and others and it gets stronger and stronger the more you get.
This can be fun, but I feel its detrimental to designing actual content for decked out heroes like this. I think it'd be cool if there were some limit in a team setting per incarnate (something small), but also a linear boost per incarnate to make up for this. Just tossing ideas at the wall:
- You select either Judgement, Destiny, or Lore as your "Main" incarnate power, this allows it to be more potent in exchange for the others to be weaker in some manner. In a team setting, these changes are enhanced both ways (stronger main, weaker sides)
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Have oranges also grant debuff resists! 😄
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1 hour ago, brasilgringo said:
So the upshot is Titan Weapons weren't nerfed as much as expected and remain a top-tier set, though perhaps more closely tied with other top-tier sets and actually behind Claws? I had trouble understanding exactly what they changed about TW -- did they get rid of the fast-cast momentum mechanic entirely or just lower the damage and reduce some of the AOEs?
The gist of the changes are:
1) TW randomly did more damage per power than similar attacks by about ~10%, this was removed so the powers behave like other attacks with the damage formulas.
2) While you have momentum, your TW powers deal 25% less base damage, but they also have 25% faster base recharge and cost about 50% less endurance!
3) Huge change: Momentum no longer requires you to actually hit a target.
This ends up being like... a sideways nerf. I say that because it is a strict downgrade from what it was prior (which was ridiculous), but it was also buffed in major, major ways with Momentum being 100% guaranteed if you activate a power and the extreme end discount and base recharge boost of your attacks when you have momentum. As shown, it still retains a ton of it's strengths outside the absurd DPS it had prior while still pumping out great numbers.
Something anecdotal that I didn't touch on was that I was able to handle much tougher spawns than most other sets with TW. Despite a few sets having faster results, I separately ran a test of 3 even con bosses vs War Mace and TW on the SO builds and only one of those sets could consistently actually win.
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Pool Noodle or bust
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1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:
Yes. That is why invuln and shield at higher levels do really well. They can be built with IOs to have very high defence and very good resistance. Healing is barely needed then.
A resist set will probably need some healing, which most resist sets come with . They can build defence but certain mobs will strip it easily with no DDR. They are more prone to debuffs also.
That is why i put invuln and shield 2-3 but shield only with good IO investment. But Rad etc are awesome also.
A question to all...Do you think the ATO proc favours defence sets more than resist sets, that cap more easily without the proc? ElecA has very high resists already.
Resist sets should get resistance debuff resistance also or do some get this?
This is actually why Invuln is so good, its the only set that naturally gets great defense AND great resistance (except it's hole) together without having the penalties that Granite has, on top of decent debuff resists.
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Copying from Beta:
(The rules of this test are better described here: )
Overview & Biases:
The above link will go into a bit more detail, but the goal of this test is to provide benchmark tests for Scrapper Primaries in a more or less neutral environment (no gimmicks, no enemy resists, etc) that aimed to emulate a standard mission experience. This means a 4-floor defeat-all mission with slight variations to mob placement, size, and level room to room as well as a mix of enemy ranks with a mandatory defeat of 2 boss spawns and a final elite boss spawn.
With /Willpower and no pools/epics besides Combat Jumping (for the SO test, IO's had hasten), the enemies and difficulty setting were just enough to get "Safety" as a metric as many sets have clear design intention of trading damage for utility or mitigation, or vice versa, and allowing myself to actually experience or mitigate damage I felt is a worthy point of interest. Given this is an "everyday" sort of benchmark, ignoring the impact that Ice Melee's safety provides I feel would be unjust compared to if I just made myself invincible and went to town to track raw output. Likewise, a set like Fire Melee really showed where it can struggle if it's not constantly killing.
This test has less mobs than a farm, but more to deal with than a Pylon, so results may vary wildly from the expectations provided by those popular trials. Both of those I feel do not provide a full picture between the mix of AoE and ST output, favoring the extremes on either end. The office map simulation just as well does not highlight certain sets in the way you'd expect either. Something like the new Energy Melee may massacre Pylons but end up on the low/mediocre end here or vice versa with other sets.
I hope you find the following enlightening in some ways, and let the results speak for themselves when it comes to the changes to multiple melee sets we see here in Beta.
Results on SO's only:
All sets were played with a SO build with /Willpower as a secondary and no pool powers/epics except Combat Jumping, in order to isolate the primary set as much as possible.
(except for Claws and Kinetic Melee which were given Overwhelming KD IO's + a lvl 50 damage IO to have the same slotting + knockdown on their ranged cones. These were ran due to the incredibly common practice of slotting for KD, and only 2 melee sets actually "needing" it.)
Results without the IO in Claws can be seen here:
Spoiler
As you can see by some of the names, we have been testing these changes internally for quite a while now to make sure things land in the desired spot!
Breaking down this chart, each column represents a different aspect:
- AVG = the average clear time of the mission from all 10 runs (minutes : seconds : milliseconds)
- SWING = How far away from the Total Average the set performed
- SD Deviation = Standard Deviation from run to run, measuring how consistently each set performed despite the 10 runs having slightly different mob formations and placements
- BEST TIME = the best run time of the set, shows the max potential
- WORST TIME = the worst run time of the set, shows the minimum potential
- SAFETY = This counts the number of deaths in the 10 runs. A score of 0.50 means that I took substantial damage but never died, a 0.00 means I was practically invincible!
- SAFETY ADJ = Each point in the Safety column is multiplied by 20 seconds, and then added to the average to show an Adjusted Safety Average.
With those all factored in, we can rank the sets against each other on more than just the average clear time:
From left to right, we have the results with Claws KD, Claws "Pure", and the average between the two.
Now, lets see how this changes when we jump to an IO build:
Results on a "Mid Level" IO Build:
All sets were played with a n IO build with no purples, winter sets, or "special" procs beyond a single Damage Proc like Mako's or Obliteration that *any* Melee attack could slot.
All sets achieved 72.5% global recharge (142.5% most of the time with Hasten up, only a 20s cooldown there).
All sets had the normal uniques like Numina, Kismet, etc slotted
All sets ran the tests at +3/x5 difficulty
With recharge and procs thrown into the mix, the top sets become a LOT closer in clear times, and safety really isn't a concern outside of Energy Melee where rapid ET's kinda hurt lol.
Like above, lets see how all the factors weigh in:
The margins are so close for the "top tier" that with more than 10 tests a piece I'm sure they'd all be near dead even!
Combined Results:
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alright fam, who's down for an all combat-tp, all energy melee slobber knocker through some TF's?
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I'm going to mirror what others have said in that in a Vacuum, Incarnates are fine. Its when you have a team or better yet a league of heroes that ALL have Judgements, Lores, and Destinies stacking that it gets ridiculous.
New incarnate content (whether that be actual content or new enemies, modes, etc) will need to account for that in some way.
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12 minutes ago, Eclipse. said:
You're not wrong...but I'd argue when you put it like that it makes it sound a lot less significant than it is.
That +2.5% better defense = 10% more damage mitigation in that equation.
baseline 0% you take 1/2 (20/40) hits.
2.5% defense you take 19/40 hits
25% defense you take 1/4 (10/40) hits.
27.5% defense you take 9/40 hits.
30% defense you take 1/5th (8/40) hits
Every 2.5% defense = 2.5% (1/40) less hits taken as a static amount, but as your defense goes higher thats a larger percentage of increased damage mitigation. (inverse is also true...at 42.5% defense you receive 50% more damage than you do at 45%)
While true, it really would not make that significant a difference unless I ran SR like 25 times
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Alrighty, so for take 2 I added the 4 pool powers: Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping, and Maneuvers (except for Stone which doesn't allow CJ) for a total of +23.4% added SL res and +15.8% added defense.
Starting with Invuln, I noticed I was not getting dented at all... so I upped the difficulty to 2/8... nada
So I decided, why not: lets go right to +4/x8
First thing to note, all sets except Fire actually lasted longer on average vs +4/x8 with pool powers than they did at 0/8 with no pool powers.
Second, Granite is no surprise but Invuln holding up to the immortal line at the technical max difficulty is given the bare minimum investment!
Bio holds strong still, collectively taking the number 2 spot even in offensive mode (Again, not counting Granite). Invuln I put above Bio though as I only ever needed to use Dull Pain once, while Bio Defensive I needed to cycle the clicks often to survive despite not going down.
Ice is the same deal as before, though it never killed anyone. Willpower received a HUGE boost with added res and def moving above SR, which held up relatively the same with beyond soft-cap, but still getting the occasional hit in hurt badly. Speaking of, I can confirm scaling starts at 60%, but I would still love it to start at least at 90%.
Shield and Rad likewise jumped up, Shield much more so. The kicker here was like with WP, the added Res and Def stacks very nicely with the existing Res and Def in the set, and allowed for an additional Shield Charge to buy time per run on average. Rad bumped up two spots just on the note of being a bit tougher, and by nature of a certain other set plummeting.
Stone is about the same as before, as are Dark and Fire (though Fire actually fared worse), but the massive drop is with Elec Armor. The added res helps, as does a bit of defense, but at +4 the end drain potency has been stripped which allowed about half the runs on 0/8 to be immortal. Oh well.
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Weekly Discussion 79: Mercenaries. Discuss!
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Galaxy Brain
I think what absolutely should happen is the Medic becoming a separate pet with it's own version of an AoE serum it can provide. You get it at lvl 18 anyways so its barely even a change there. The medic should have limited offensive potential as described in @Monos King and I's rework, and ideally it should have some sort of cone or other AoE attack that spreads a debuff like the proposed Suppressive Fire.
The soldiers can then get a 3rd actual source of damage and should be the rank and file minions that provide lots of -Def and lots of dots. I'd say they could stand to have Frag Grenade too somewhere in their arsenal on a long cooldown since there would be three of them (and also should make grenades hit harder when they do toss em).
Spec Ops likewise need cooldowns shortened to where their controls are up almost every mob if not every mob. When they work, they're great. Its just you only get them like every 4th encounter if not less. Adding in actual snipe damage and exotic damage here would be nice too.
The Commando I feel should be the heavy damage, though burn patches are overdone for MM pets. Making it into an actual death machine for both AoE and ST would be nice so you have an actual blaster on the team would be sick. Hell, make him a little squishy since you have a medic on-deck along with Serum.