Galaxy Brain
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Posts posted by Galaxy Brain
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RANGED DAMAGE SET TESTING:
Hello Everyone,
Following up with what was done in the Scrapper Primary Testing, it is time to take a look at the Blaster Primaries!
The above link to the Scrapper post will go into more details, but the premise of these tests are to isolate Ranged Primaries as much as possible to gauge their "realistic" base performance in a given mission environment. This is done through running a course 10 times per primary, and then recording the times to formulate an average
- Using a standardized Office Map, we can set a course that properly challenges the player with movement with corridors and different vertical spawn points that we see in normal missions. Pylon and Farm metrics are nice, but they do not really reflect normal game play.
- Broken up into 4 floors, this map contains custom-made ranged enemies that appear at roughly the Red Dot locations shown above. Floors 1-3 have at least 2 guaranteed Boss encounters, and Floor 4 has a guaranteed Elite Boss encounter. Red Lines represent clickable doors with a gentleman's rule to finish the room before moving through the door, and circled areas are where some herding up can be attempted if possible. As some may remember from the Scrapper test, the Warehouse environment was too open and heavily favored herding strategies for completion. That thread will be updated with Office Results soon as well.
- The ranged enemies in this map present just enough danger to the Blaster to where mitigation from the Primary will play a key role in completion, but they do not present such a threat that they cannot easily be overcome with normal play.
- The Blasters I used all have a near-identical SO build where I 3 slot all attacks for Damage, then 1 each of Acc/End/Rech except for the Nukes and AoEs which I opted for 3 Dam/Rech thanks to their built in Acc modifiers universally being better than 1 SO, and on normal AoEs I ran 2 rech and 1 Acc thanks to the Sustain ability.
- I also used /Elec Manip for each test with only Build Up and Force of Thunder being used. FoT would only be used between spawns to not have it's CC come into play, and the time spent using it per run was subtracted from the totals to show the "true" speed. I chose this in particular due to being the most "average" of the Sustains where it's secondary effect could be more easily isolated combined with a normal Build Up. Other sets like /Time could have fit if not for the +Rech on it's BU clone.
- Health and Stamina were 3 slotted as well as FoT 6 slotted, other powers used were CJ with 1 Def SO, and Hover with 1 Fly SO (Swift also had a fly SO). The ranged enemies and height restrictions on the map did not allow for much cheese if any, and aside from a few angles with cones I kept myself at near ground level.
- Running at +0/x3 allowed for a variety of mob encounters that often would be spread in such a way to utilize AoEs to their full potential as well as test ST / AoE / Area coverage alike.
- Like with Scrappers, if I died I restarted the mission and took note of the death in a "Safety" rating. The higher the rating, the more deaths I had. Each death I applied a 20s penalty to the average to give weight to sets with mitigation tools, which will be reflected in a separate column.
So, with these rules in place to emulate an "average" mission that tests ST, AoE, and Mitigation of just the primaries at a basic level, lets see what happened:
Sorted by AVG:
Well, it seems that we have a certain set that is literally melting the competition, and two that appear to have Silencers on. In terms of raw average clear time, Fire is leaps and bounds the fastest with a tremendous lead over the other blast sets, and nearly having a 4x bigger gap from the average compared to the 2nd place Beam Rifle! On the flip side, both Assault Rifle and Sonic Blast are at the bottom with incredibly slow average clear times. Luckily, that is not the only measure.
Sorted by SAFETY:
Washing away the competition here is Water Blast! With it's combination of self healing, reliable knockdowns, and overall great damage it was one of the few sets to clear the course with 0 defeats at all, alongside Dark and Psy blast who all shared the trait of reliable (AoE) CC and decent secondary effects. Coming in second with 1 defeat was Ice Blast, which while it could reliably freeze a single target in it's tracks it had trouble vs crowds if Blizzard wasn't online, leading to multiple stray hits weaseling in and netting a lucky win for the NPC's.
Fire is knocked here with 5 deaths, mostly against the Elite Boss spawn where the lack of mitigation outside of killing before you get killed lead to some unfortunate ends. On the bottom of the list though was Radiation Blast with a whopping 9 defeats! The set deals plenty of damage, but I found out the hard way that speed matters here. Many powers deal damage over time or simply animate slowly which allows hits to come in in ways that even Fire Blast didn't have to worry about due to raw application speed, on top of havign a tiny KB chance on it's cone + the ST stun being on a longish cooldown that lead to poor mitigation vs tougher single targets.
Sorted by BEST TIME:
Tracking the best time per set shows sort of the upper lvl they can achieve when you're really in the groove. Of note are Energy and Dark Blast attaining very fast clear times compared to where they end up when averaged out!
Sorted by WORST TIME:
Likewise, sorting by the worst time gives an idea of how well they perform in a less than ideal run. Water being so high here shows how consistent the set performs regardless of the enemy setup.
Sorted by STANDARD DEVIATION:
Speaking of consistency, the Standard Deviation shows us how much variance there was run-to-run on average per set. The smaller the deviation the better a set could probably just follow it's normal gameplan without needing to worry about as many X factors like spacing or special targeting. Sets that rely on such tactics ended up having much higher deviations as seen here.
With these 5 metrics in mind, I was able to rank each primary based on the actual score per category + the gap between it and the next set, and then add up these values by weight. The lower the final score, the higher tiered the set is when looked at it alone:
FINAL RESULTS:
Its fitting that the only thing to beat Fire is Water IMO! Lets break this down per tier:
S TIER:
With everything put together, the safety and consistency of Water Blast gives it the edge over Fire's Raw Speed given it's lack of those key traits. Ice rounds out the S-Tier at the lower end simply due to lack of AoE speed while having the some of the best times vs the Boss encounters. Really not much else to add here aside from these three being incredibly solid sets at the base level.
A TIER:
Beam, Archery, and Energy are all almost tied in the A Tier. Beam and Archery boast some of the fastest recharging nukes and could reliably just delete certain spawns, with beam having a slight ST edge over Archery and vice versa with Archery having a bit better AoE. Energy was a bit slower given Nova recharges a bit slower, but there is a reason we call Nukes Nova's. When it was up and available, it would delete an entire spawn no questions asked and fling bosses about for safety, and the rest of the powers are all very solid versions of your standard blasts that lead to an overall good performance. I'd say the sets in these tiers were held back by not having as 100% reliable mitigation as sets in the S tier with either 100% knockdowns / slows that lead to a few defeats each, impacting Beam Rifle specifically. Nor did they have the raw... literal Fire power like Fire does nor the likes of Blizzard/Geyser to edge out just a bit quicker clear times in the case of Energy and Archery.
B TIER:
Next up we have Dual Pistols, Rad, and Dark Blast. These three all had separate issues holding them back, but lets start with Rad as we touched on it for the safety portion: it has none. The combination of slow animations, slow application of damage, and hard to apply/stack Mez effects (by itself) lead to it tanking hard in the safety adjustment + middling scores elsewhere brought it down compared to the high tiers. If you pair it with a very defensive secondary or team support it can shine, but isolated it felt very rough. On the flip side, Dark Blast was able to breeze through each spawn without a care. Guaranteed KB in a cone, solid ST damage, a great ST hold, a Self Heal, a nuke that soft-caps you vs anything left alive + all attacks stacking -ToHit made it probably the safest set in general, though it did pay for that safety when it comes to AoE performance. Having different shaped cones that deal damage in different amounts/ways lead to very inconsistent times based on the spawn set up room to room, leading to sub-average scores except for Best Time and Safety.
The best way I could describe Dual Pistols at a base/isolated level is Anemic. Swapping mainly between Normal and Incendiary ammo depending on whether I needed safety or damage, I was able to clench an incredibly consistent performance, but it was consistently on the slow side. Despite the animations having been sped up, the application of damage is still slow and the mitigation is not super consistent. Add to that different ranged cones / PBAoE that requires >4s commitment where missing a key target leaves you open + slower animating ST attacks and well... you get a B-Tier. Luckily you can proc the hell out of the set!
C TIER: ELEC BLAST
The last few sets stand out in their own divisions, so I'll just talk about them as-is. Elec Blast was actually very very safe in practice even by itself as it's great TAoE Ball Lightning + SC would actually do solid work vs mobs of minions + Sparky taking care of stragglers, and the fact that thunderous Blast can be initiated safely + completely drain living targets into submission. In general, if you could survive the alpha you won teh fight vs Bosses and the Elite Boss with elec blast, with the Voltaic Sentinel contributing quite a lot of ST dps at a glance! Unfortunately, the issues add up when you consider the cast times of some key powers (Voltaic Sentinel, Short Circuit, Thunderous Blast) on top of End Drain really only working on bosses about halfway through the fight if not more if you happen to miss thanks to RNG lead to slower times and a bit of inconsistency.
D TIER: PSY BLAST
A surprisingly fun set, Psy Blast I could compare directly to Dark in many ways except for AoE.... which it struggles with. With only Psy Tornado and the Nuke to clear mobs with, I had to cycle ST attacks around frantically in between to clear areas. Luckily most of those ST attacks come with hefty -Rech which pairs well with Sustain, as well as a slew of soft/hard control to make it a very safe set of runs. This also made it weirdly faster the more boss spawns there were in the mission as I could tear through them faster than a packed area full on minions/LT's most of the time. If one of the powers were say, a sort of Cone or if Psy Nado was made to animate much faster it would easily bump up in the placings.
E TIER: ASSAULT RIFLE
I have a thread on this in the suggestions forum, but the short and sweet of it is Animation Times, different cone sizes, lack of aim and Ignite being weird. Full Auto takes 4s to animate and deals significantly less damage than similar "previously crashless" nukes, Flamethrower takes 7 seconds to apply its full damage after a 2.33s animation! Sniper Rifle animates slower than other fast snipes. To put the cherry on top, the Aim replacement found in Ignite not only takes a bit to animate but you need a method of keeping a foe in the patch which is actively fought by your other powers potentially knocking the guy out of the patch which is just silly. It was an actual slog for me to run AR through these tests with only /Build Up helping out from the secondary.
F TIER: SONIC ATTACK
It's not over till the... slowest set sings I guess. This set has major issues with animation times averaging around 2s a click outside the T1 attack. Sure, you can sleep groups very reliably but then taking them down is a snore-fest with only 3 ST attacks with the T3 animating slowly, and your other AoE's waking them up anyways. At least the Nuke applies damage dang near instantly compared to all other nukes (I think Psy may have done this as well) which was nice, but everything else just feels incredibly lackluster. Bosses, especially the Elite Boss, in general were a slog to get through with the poor ST output and needing to toss in Shockwave for safety every so often. I guess it is a bit of a philosophical debate though, given the secondary effect is a direct force multiplier... should it remain the worst performer in a vacuum?
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These are my thoughts and observations on the Blast primaries so far. Take it with a grain of salt though as these runs were designed to highlight just the primary with a little help from Build Up that could emulate the effects of secondary attacks / other effects if we eyeball this compared to Defs/Corrs as well. In the future I'll add in procs and the like to see how certain sets (Dual Pistols) may change radically.
Thank you,
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To all the people saying get gud:
My Claw/EA was able to wipe the floor with the entire mission until Ward turns on you, I got unlucky and died.... which I then went to the hospital.
I was spawn camped by tons of enemies that would kill me during my rez animation where I could not retaliate, and eventually had to cheese my way out of the hospital by mashing movement off the ledge as I spawned / got killed to where I could fall down and use a wakie without as much aggro.
That part is not challenging, it's just frustrating as you do not even get a chance to react / do anything other than repeatedly get wrecked by what Ward Summons mere feet away. If the hospital were moved some distance away it'd fix the mission honestly.
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/reported for false advertising
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2 hours ago, Ukase said:
but you touch my PPS, I'm gonna be pissed.
In my experience, it very much depends on who is touching my PPs
I would like that power to be customizable though! Or at least a min-fx option for us Ice Types.
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TBH, I'd prefer if Rage applied a debuff to def/res while Active but at much lower value, so it's always present but managable
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12 minutes ago, Haijinx said:
The def crash existed on live
It just got overwrote by raging again.
So you never saw it unless slowed, or unenhanced, etc.
This.
It was not nerfed by intention, it was actually not working as intended and has been fixed.
The "correct" way its supposed to work tho is questionable
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Simple change, but with Swift adding Flight Speed bonuses, why not mirror that to Sprint as well for our Fliers? It should already be balanced by the end cost of running it + Choice of Flight Power.
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Containment:
Fantastic effect, feels incomplete tho. It would be very nice if *all* mez effects could trigger containment damage for parity's sake.
Perhaps have a small bonus damage for allies that attack foes controlled by Controllers too? This would affect your Controller Pets + Confused Targets as well, and I think be a benefit for the current meta where strict control loses a bit of value.
Domination:
The Jekyll/Hyde style doesn't really exist if you can always be Hyde. They should not get the bonus damage vs control like I proposed for Controllers, given they have stronger control options. I would like there to be some way to make the process of getting to PermaDom smoother though so there isn't like an arbitrary "gap".
Scourge:
Another great *idea*, but in practice it's questionable. As noted, its really only good vs Big targets which is neat, but lackluster in normal gameplay. Just tossing ideas at the wall but what if Scourge also scaled on both your HP (maybe the more you have the higher base chance so when you are playing very well you're rewarded) or maybe your Team Size where you get X% base scourge chance per Team mate in a ~40ft radius?
Supremacy:
As noted in @Monos King and I's threads, I feel there is room to reallllllly play with this. It's a fine inherent if a bit boring. Looping effects such as the upgrades or defensive stats would be gucci.
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1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:
AR could probably use a little modernizing, but I would only support it if all mobs that use the set get the upgrades as well.
Liiiikkkeeeeee Mercs? 😄
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8 hours ago, ImpousVileTerror said:
In terms of things like Brawl, Rest, and Sprint and all the other variations of it, it might be interesting to introduce "Inherent ATOs" which could open the door for some +/- effects.
ie: +10% Recharge and +10% Endurance Discount, at the cost of -25% Damage.
or
+15% Control Duration and +10% Control Magnitude, at the cost of -5% Defense, -10% Resistance, and -15% Regeneration.
Thus giving players the opportunity to personalize their characters on any Archetype, since every Archetype has access to those core Inherent Powers.
If something like that is implemented, I would strongly recommend avoiding anything that gives +Damage, or to make sure that anything that does has a suitably steep penalty to balance it out.
Now this is a neat idea...
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20 minutes ago, MTeague said:
Ignite definiltey works best paired with an Immob, or some Knockback/Repel to shove things into a corner and light the corner on fire.
For my AR/MC, I just rely on Kicks, Ki Push, and Reaction Time to trap bosses in the burning corner.
Reaction Time doesn't really trap them but it takes them a LOT longer to leave the burning patch.
Minions are less of an issue, the're just gonna die anyway.
Right, I was able to use KB into corners to help roast bosses but making it more forgiving would be nice!
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3 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:
The ONLY rework that should be considered for damage procs is a way to scale the damage down but keep it hitting each use.
While not the ONLY option, that would be really nice if it were like: Adds X damage to your attack where X = some formula based on the recharge (longer is better).
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So, in preparation for a sequel to my Melee Primary testing thread using Ranged Sets... I played AR for the first time in years and....
Wow, it doesn't feel right.
The damage didn't feel quite there, the speed was incredibly lacking, the lack of a self buff, and the mitigation being mostly RNG combined made for a very underwhelming experience. In order to give the weapon some polish, I think theres some things we can implement to give it some fun new ammo:
1) Full Auto
Going in alphabetical order between Archery, AR, and Beam Rifle, I was able to play back-to-back the 3 sets that had the "original free nukes". Of these, both RoA and Overcharge both do over 220 base damage in a proper AoE, compared to Full Auto's 180ish base damage in a narrow cone. While lighting up a whole hallway of enemies is fun, being locked in place to do that for 4 seconds is not. Also, with similar target caps the "circle" AoEs of the other weapon ranged sets just work better. RoA has an identical 4s animation, but you can fire it at a location from safety and let it rain which is much safer than Full Auto, on top of doing more damage!
Supposedly, you're able to land a "Lucky Shot" for more damage but I don't think this works (more on that in a bit!). FA just feels far too sluggish for something that should be a show-stopping barrage of... slugs.
I would recommend speeding up the animation, adding some sort of mitigation to the move with maybe Terrorize / Knockdown per DoT, or just upping the damage WAY up for the commitment.
2) Ignite
AR essentially gives up Aim for this power and... it's ok? Without a means of keeping a foe in the patch, it is incredibly finnicky and with the KB present in the set it sort of fights itself. The sentinel version switches this to an extreme DoT you can just put on somebody which is nice, but you lose a bit of it's soul. Luckily, we have a similar power to draw inspiration from: Enflame.
What I would love to see is to turn Ignite into a version of Enflame where you either
- A: Select a target and Ignite is centered on them, burning them up and any enemies surrounding them. If the foe moves, it moves with them.
- B: Enemies who are hit by ignite take a strong DoT just for touching the burn patch, with the patch itself having severely reduced damage (I'm thinking like 50/50 split between patch and the applied DoT to have it behave the same as now).
I think either idea would be great as IMO the only issue with Ignite is actually leveraging it. It does a TON of damage, but it has a tiny radius. Either keeping it on an enemy or having it just work with 1 touch of the flames would be awesome. Oh, and shaving a second off the animation time wouldn't hurt 😉
Speaking of speed, Flamethrower currently deals it's damage over 7 seconds. Could this be sped up so it actually applies damage competitively? It casts in 2.33 seconds but it also seems to start applying damage after a delay, tightening that up significantly will help AR immensely when compared to other blast sets which can deal cone damage instantly.
3) Lucky Shots/Head Shots
Touched upon with Full Auto, a trope missing from AR (notably Sniper Rifle) that is in every FPS ever is the Head Shot for critical damage. Since the set lacks Aim, it should have means of gaining bonus damage like Dual Pistols can, and for the rifle I think the occasional burst of extra lethal damage is fitting. Lets say you have a % chance to deal 30-50% of base damage as a HEAD SHOT:
- Burst - 20% chance
- Slug - 30% chance
- Sniper Rifle FAST - 50% Chance
- Sniper Rifle SLOW - 100% Chance
- Full Auto - 25% chance per bullet?
Incorporating Bean Bag, maybe the chance increases vs Stunned Targets. Or better yet, increases with ToHit to give it that coveted Targeting Drone synergy!
Over time these will add up on top of a more reliable Ignite and Flamethrower to really sell that you are one-hero army that can take down mooks left and right non-stop and give AR a more unique and competitive feel.
Actually, speaking of:
4) Unique Ranges
More of a "For Fun" idea, but since Savage Leap has tech that is based on range, why not port some of that for AR? Specifically, I'm thinking of two powers.
- Buckshot: Greatly increased damage, knockback Mag and Knockback chance the CLOSER you are to the target
- Sniper Rifle: Greatly increased damage, knockback Mag and Knockback chance the FURTHER you are from the target
I don't expect these last ones, but given how these weapons tend to work in other media, playing into that trope would be something unique!
Thoughts?
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25 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:
Except you don't get a "complete" set of pets until you get that other upgrafd power at 32. Most MM pets are honestly pretty bad until then. Having the Mannion and lt pets with all their powers would be more effective than having the big pet but all pets only having their tier 1 powers.
And if you've never played a controller this is nothing new, but the way the pets play this is basically like how melee sets or ranged blast sets get their big power/nukes at 32, but would at least make the MMs less useless in the earlier levels.
Agreed with this point @gameboy1234. Assuming you get them fully upgraded, I would rather have that than the T3 pet at that range. Rocking a squad of 5 fully decked out pets + ideally a new power in the mix would be worth it IMO.
Something like....
- 1. T1 Attack
- 1. T1 Pet
- 2. T2 Attack
- 6. NEW power - This would be thematic per set, but gives us a lot of wiggle room for how certain sets could "catch up".
- 8. T3 Attack
- 12. T2 Pet
- 18. UPGRADE POWER - the 1st upgrade is now automatic. This upgrade still behaves like the prior 32 spot, but also provides some sort of temporary boost to your pets when used on them at any time. The recharge will be adjusted to be slower however. Makes the actual upgrade power not as useless / a tax.
- 26. "Unique" power (Soul Extraction, Repair, etc)
- 32. T3 Pet
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Another thing, is you get the 1st upgrade at lvl 6, which is like 30m to 1hr of time? You essentially have it from the start, making at least that auto cast would be nice and I really really doubt those 1st 5 levels with an upgraded t1 pet would be broken as you get 2 upgraded pets at 6.
Flip side, the last power you get is a true game changer for most every MM set, but until you get there most feel really really anemic (such as bots) and it sucks.
If I were being more conservative with this idea, I would have the 1st upgrade just become an automatic thing in Supremacy when you summon a pet in range. This would open up just 1 new power per set.
Then, I would move the last upgrade earlier in the set and give it some sort of thematic use to all the pets when you use it. For example, on Robots it will give them a +50% Energy Damage boost for ~20 sec or something when you use it, on Ninja it gives them all Stealth/Defense, etc, as well as permanently upgrade them while they are alive. It becomes a longer recharge "buff" power to the pets with an active and somewhat passive use.
Have that power be at 26 and the final pet be at 32, as the fully upgraded t1 and t2 squad should be fine to fill the gap between.
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15 minutes ago, Patti said:
I don't want to take the attacks just to get the upgrades.
On that same note tho, you take the upgrades just to get the upgrades.
If you take the attacks just for that and never use them (like most mms), what is different?
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@Monos King and I were talking and came up with a radical idea:
1) Remove the upgrade powers completely.
2) Increase the recharge time of the T2 attack to 30 seconds, and the T3 to 60 seconds, and buff the hell out of their damage, secondary effects, cc, etc. T1 attack remains a spammy option. Talking it out, the MM attacks are often not worth using (generally) due to end cost and such, and more importantly taking up time you could have spent on a more valuable secondary power at that moment. Shifting these to "big" item attacks that are not used as often but with more bang for the buck could make them much more attractive.
3) When you take these attacks, you automatically unlock the upgrade abilities on pets. This could be done similar to other powers where buying it gives you multiple abilities, such as stance powers and such. Simply buy the attack and you get an auto power that upgrades pets.
4) In place of the upgrade slots, each primary now has 2 open power options. Most all sets would greatly benefit from changing up their structure and allowing some more thematic powers! Mercs get 3 soldiers and a medic summon power. Robots get some sort of "Locked On" ST debuff to help with ST. Ninja can get a defensive tool, etc.
Thoughts on this line of thinking?
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On 7/19/2020 at 5:24 PM, Ashington said:
i know that feel. all i want is to combine grav with martial assault so i can propel poisoned sofas at people
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The stealth Merc Buff we've been waiting for!
Just curious, but how did that happen?
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I've found myself unfortunately leaning away from Brutes after the Tanker changes. AoE feels more fun on Tanks, and for general Damage Scrappers and Stalkers feel better as well once you get the ATO's. Brutes to me have felt like an odd middle ground where I haven't had the "spark" to make a new one.
What would you all reccomend for a set that does better on them specifically?
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Its funny, the last incarnate thread I saw has disappeared...
But for a serious response, I found running DA stuff helps a ton as does saving up Emp merits! 🙂
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13 hours ago, tellania said:
Since we are talking ICE/x, I'll bring up ice/kinetic melee.
Mostly an experiment in stacking -damage (add in soul epic). Still not sure how well all of KM -dam stacks with each attack, but overall, I havent been hit that hard except the usual banes of Ice armor (nemesis, crystal DE). I noticed it appears to be missing from most of your tier list of secondaries (sans bottom of fun factor).
@Bopper and I were just talking about this. You could hold easily close to -50% damage or more on multiple targets + -ToHit + Slows....
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This is a support set, yes?
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Alt necro with skeletons plsssssss
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Blaster Primary Comparison: Standard Environment Testing
in Blaster
Posted
I took it into consideration, but I'll come back to that soon.