Galaxy Brain

Make repair into a Repair Drone pet.

There are obviously certain things that do not need testing to provide feedback on, like the current changes to Travel Powers + Ninjitsu where the performance shift is black and white. However, in any other circumstance where there are complex changes then I am 100% behind Sai where testing should be required.

While true, I doubt it will be better in reality as Live Shadow Maul is roughly equal to SM and ToF combined, so if you took live SM + any other AoEs.... yeah

In my testing it was not underperforming, if anything it was actually among the best sets for the normal missions. That being said, the main issue here is that the set is technically being nerfed with the SM change as with only Shadow Maul (pre patch) I was able to match the results of current SM + ToF. This means that before you could have SM + Epic AoE for great output while now you need either both AoE's from Dark or youre worse off.

Now that it's open beta, I can admit I used the fixed version!

even a few of the generic Praetorian Buildings would be nice here or there

@Troo, run the BU + AS around 20-40 times for an avg?

I would honestly say yes. Using it in the middle of a packed mob looked right to me over the 40+ missions i bombarded enemies with it.

Good stuff @Kanil! This should be emphasized. My tests here are in place to be a separate metric than clearing farms or taking down pylons, but its still just 1 metric. Claws may be the best here at the "general" tests but may not be the best for pure AoE or pure ST those tests tend to cover. This test IMO reflects the general day to day gameplay better though, so I do have a bit of bias when it comes to the "baseline / generic performance" using a story mission whether it be the Mission Sim or the Trapdoor mission you tried. But again, its one measure. If you're looking at a set for a very specific purpose, these tests generally will not reflect that specific strength.

The general boosted range is still there @ExeErdna, each attack has about 8.5ft range or so. As for throwing something at the wall, what if we did this: Add the ~10% base damage back into TW attacks However, make them follow formula (10% slower rech, more end, etc) Still apply the 25% stat changes in momentum based off the new numbers This would be a subtle change, but may give the set a *scootch* more power to where you can say swing 1 less time per encounter? The boosted recharge times with napkin math would be less than 1 second slower during momentum, but be still notably faster between momentum periods as you'd still be using the faster recharge by the time you use the power again more often than not.

Since this seems super-specific to Ninja sets then, it just seems like an odd line in the sand. At the very least, given it is specific to Ninja, would it be possible to implement a sort of "the stronger movement buff stays" sort of deal instead of just one overriding the other?

@zeeviant, TW was overperforming compared to every other set in basically any way you could slice it. ST DPS? TW was the best by a margin AoE Damage? TW was easily up there for the top spot, though sets like Rad and Spines are "easier" to manage than TW for max performance Added safety? TW is definitely up there with tons of (AoE) knockdowns, an AoE parry, and generally just wiping up mobs faster than they can harm you on top of that. Outside of the end cost and small learning curve (both easily fixed), and I guess not being able to use it with Shield, there was no real reason to NOT use TW compared to nearly any other melee set for raw output unless you just did not like how it played or did not want to manage endurance. The downsides were heavily, heavily outweighed by the upsides for the set when you matched it up to its peers outside of essentially AFK farming or low level content. Alongside the set actually breaking some of the "rules" of how powers work by doing more damage than it should, this is what warranted the set being dialed back. What everyone has been showing since is that TW is still in a great spot and is still swinging in the top end of melee power. Do I think maybe it could use a little something? Sure, though I haven't been able to put my finger on quite what yet...

Luckily, there are now 2 AoEs with 20% stun chances each. Also, anything you could 1-shot stun can likely just be 1-shot by EM. If you are concerned about hard-Crowd Controlling multiple targets tho, there may be a different AT

Re: Stun On any target worth specifically stunning as opposed to just killing, you would still need a 1-2 punch to stun even before this new version of EM. Needing to set up a new 1-2 punch that just so happens to do more damage and have side effects is a net boost, and does not invalidate the cottage rule as there are no slotting changes to any effected powers.

@Jimmy / @Captain Powerhouse, Question on the movement changes... why those specific powers (ninja and tac arrow), but not other powers like Quickness?

Claws got a bump both because TW went down, and because i decided to test it with Shockwave converted to knockdown due to that being near standard slotting for the power. That one change allows it to skyrocket in effectiveness! The non KD results are also posted.

Recharge. Despite being a small cone, Eagles Claw is a tremendous ST attack and even a portion of the main damage being spread out quickly + dragins tail adds up to a set that can take on crowds and bosses equally well.

Edited my post to reflect the actual IO results, I took an incorrect screenshot prior!

@Maxzero Thank you so much for that catch! Turns out I had grabbed the incorrect screenshot for the IO portion of the tests (Earlier build....) The correct results :

While Staff has more AoE, it has slower AoE. Overall, I feel staff does fantastic but it lacks a way to quickly dish out damage. As a fight goes on you can build up and unleash sure, but then the animations to do so end up being a smidge lengthy which then feeds back into the building up phase.... you get the idea. MA in contrast has a lightning fast PBAoE in Dragon's Tail, and the new Eagle's Claw hits like a truck to your main target and very decently well to side targets. Combined, you can wallop a close-packed crowd, kung-fu your way through some other targets, repeat, very consistently. So, one thing to note with the average times when going by that is the actual cluster of times. Lets look at the top sets: Claws 6:39:44 Difference: Martial Arts 6:40:58 0:01:14 Titan Weapons 6:41:35 0:00:37 Spines 6:41:44 0:00:09 Savage Melee 6:43:44 0:01:59 War Mace 6:46:45 0:03:01 MA is ~1s slower on the 10 runs than Claws TW and Spines are both milliseconds within MA's average Savage is *just* under 2 seconds slower than Spines WM is *just* over 3 seconds slower than Savage, and in total 7 seconds slower on average than Claws, and about 5:50 seconds slower than MA. Within that 10-second bracket is where I would honestly account for X factors such as a few attacks missed here or there, a regen tick on the Elite Boss, or even maybe 1 more boss spawned for War Mace, or there was one smaller spawn for MA which skewed results a bit. Running each ten times averages out a lot, but those things could still happen! Given they are so so close though when you highlight them as a group, I would not put as much weight on that part.

Hey all, just copying my Melee Tests from beta to a new thread for ease of access / more varied discussion than just 1 set! (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: 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:

@Keleko, on mobile so I cannot quote the whole thing, but I do want to note that there are plenty of powers which use what are called "redirects" in order to use Power B when you click Power A. Titan Weapons has always used this method in order to select the Fast versions of each power since day 1, just now they have additional stat changes besides animation time. While the damage going down is a nerf, the faster recharge, and BONUS end reduction on top of what the formulas would dictate I would argue is a straight buff, and on the whole the set still performs in the top tier of melee primaries. The damage formulas are pretty much just that, a formula that ties in recharge with damage that guides faster powers to hot more often for less, and vice versa. TW originally broke this formula by actually doing MORE damage than its supposed to, and now its simply following it like 99% of all other powers. (There are some odd exceptions but they are one-offs) What I feel is being ignored here is the huge DPA and DPE (per endurance) that TW now has. In the same timeframe, TW likely deals more damage for less endurance than other similar sets due to being able to swing big attacks around back to back with 1s animations. Thats where the damage comes into play, which while video-gamey given youd expect the faster hits to deal more per swing, its more about the total momentum. Could it use a bit more... something? Possibly, though from what I can tell it is still in a great spot so it'll be tricky.

You are 100% right here when it comes to buffs and enhancements. However, the way TW works is that you actually switch to different powers entirely when momentum is active. The set has the standard, slow version of each power and then when you activate momentum you swap to the "Fast" version, which not only has different animation time but now has different BASE recharge/end cost and damage.

the Mission Simulator test also had enemies with no resistances. The avg resists across levels does matter, but we don't have concrete info on that just yet.

If you like ST, then why not use a stalker?