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Galaxy Brain

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Posts posted by Galaxy Brain

    Ice on Brute

    in Brute

    Posted

    With the new fury changes, Ice's Slows are much more of a moot point.  My Ice/Bio brute can fill up fury pretty damn quick with just Frost 🙂

    Knockback Attack: Ranked Damage?

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted

    With regards to distance, a stronger force would totally send an object further and thus logically they'd take more of an impact/damage than if they were sent less distance or knocked on their butt. 

     

    Given the utility benefit of setting KB to KD, I would like there to be at least a lesser effect if "KB Damage" becomes a thing if the mag is below the threshold and becomes knockdown.

     

     

    • Like 2

    Knockback Attack: Ranked Damage?

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

    Really neat idea and I'd vote for it as long as it's not for knockback but for another effect like stun or immobilize.

     

    Thanks to Force Feedback proc mainly and secondarily to Sudden Acceleration proc, I feel that KB oriented sets already have a clear advantage over any other effect, except maybe hold.  I'd hate to see that gap get wider.

    One thing I wanted to touch on was how to handle Knockdown here... maybe a condition where KB mag needs to be >1 for the chance to even occur? 

    • Like 1

    Knockback Attack: Ranked Damage?

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted · Edited by Galaxy Brain

    So, I've made a thread on this before but I had a thought today that warranted it's own thread. 

     

    A common idea to make Knockback more "super" is to add some sort of damage component either just directly when you cause KB, or if your target hits something. What has been the question though is how do you balance it / etc. The idea of course is that Knockback in most media sort of ends the fight. Throw mooks into the wall or across the room and they dont get back up. Toss another super through a wall and you can tell it hurt and inconvenienced them but it's not usually a fight ender. While Single Target knockback is usually not complained about as you have a ton of control over that, mass AoE knockback that scatters foes is lauded for causing chaos. 

     

    What makes up the majority of mobs? Minions. Who are usually shown as being blown away and defeated? Minions...

     

    Looks like there is a common theme here. Looking at some of the existing powers like judgements and even Scrapper criticals I realized... oh! We can have effects happen based on enemy rank!

     

    The idea:

    What if knockback attacks had some sort of reverse scrapper crit where you had a chance to deal "knockback damage", with the lower the rank the higher the chance?

     

    Just throwing numbers out:

     

    Minions and below = 50% damage chance

    LTs = 25% chance

    Bosses and above = 12.5% chance

     

    Damage Type = Smashing

    Damage = (Player lvl * 2) * (1 +(Magnitude / 10))

     

    So for example, a power with mag 5 knockback would deal:

    2 * 1.5 = 3 damage at lvl 1

    100 * 1.5 = 150 damage at lvl 50

     

    This could be flat, or work off the ATs (ranged?) Mod.

     

    Depending on the power this could be a substantial bit of damage! The trick though would be the chance of it occurring based on the rank. The lower tier enemies you send flying everywhere? Good odds that they will take the bonus damage and may be defeated outright. Bosses? Lower chance they get hurt, but it still stings when they do.

     

    The core here is that minions make up the majority of mobs, and so are the primary things to cause chaos when AoE scatter occurs. If the same power that caused scatter also directly helped eliminate the "fodder" it scatters, then it would be a lot more fun for all parties / sides of the fence.

     

    Thoughts?

    • Like 3

    Did tanks get overbuffed?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    52 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

    The problem with running identical builds across multiple ATs is that it completely misses the point.

     

    The caps are the caps. If the tank is able to hit those caps with far less IO and power choice expenditure than the brute and then utilize that excess for damage output, it surpasses the brute.

     

    I don't know how else to restate this.

     

    Yes, it's absolutely true that the brute (or the scrapper or the stalker) doesn't NEED to hit those caps to steamroll over 95% of the game's content, it still leaves the tank in a numerically superior situation over the brute regardless of the combo, especially when solo.

     

    Again though, this statement more than likely fails to remain true if the brute has a pocket kinetic or a tray full of huge reds but that just doesn't happen on the regular. And once upon a time I had some beautiful attack chain spreadsheets that let me plug any value of +damage but those died with the original shutdown so I can't even say for sure that a claws tank at the damage cap will surpass a claws brute at the cap.

     

    Everything I'm seeing and saying is based off of solo play.

    I was more talking about the methodology you have where you are trying to compare an SR/Claw tank and a Claw/SR Brute. When comparing two like ATs, this may be as close as you get so you only really have to worry about strategy.

    • Like 2

    Did tanks get overbuffed?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 7/8/2020 at 11:32 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

    Metric Measurements

    Mitigation doesn't just get attributed to the performance of the armors alone, kill speed can, and does have a big trade off in how well an AT can survive. This is clearly evident in Stalkers and Scrappers being hard capped at 75% Resistances. Stick either one in the same condition as a Tanker and a Brute, and if their kill speed is good enough they'll be able to survive equivalently. A Brute has a greater cap than either of those to allow it competition with Tankers, but it retains damage and this is its trade off.

     

    Another thing I'm highlighting with the above is power selection choice, and incidentally the use of those powers (how, when) matter a great deal in evaluating performance. The biggest reason I suspect (as I am saying now, and others have said slash hinted at) others are not diving head-long into this analysis with you is that we already went through this in the Tanker Testing for--quite literally--over three months. You called it a "consensus" but many of us saw how things were washing out. Some even did the hard math on resistance values versus cap and measured out exactly what variance of impact a Brute's survival quantified compared to a Tankers based on random selection of stats from varying builds. The average result at the end was "90%".  This was determined by a lot of players making different choices on set combination, power use, and developing final results.

     

    Example:

    • The mission simulator Galaxy Brain referred to is (I believe) the same that was used when they tested SO performance on each Melee set to measure time to clear a mission over a ridiculous amount of runs. For many sets the choices players made in their attack patterns washed out pretty consistently, but areas where choice massively mattered in performance were with sets like Kinetic Melee. Cone, PBAoE, a T9 that absolutely sucks wind when it misses (and it did a lot at SO levels). Galaxy Brain went in to the mission and walked out over and over again with these elongated 7:00 such and such times and that just confused the heck out of me. The reasonable thing was to go in and test it too, which I did, and came out with times like 5:30, and it crazy-skewed the placement. It came down to the attack pattern choices. GB was choosing to include the T9 (which I excluded completely, after all the goal was to clear as fast as possible), and didn't aptly use the Cone because it caused wild KB. I approached it by going in with PBAoE, jump up and Cone down, whittle with T1/2/3, move to the next spawn and drag Boss/EB with me (no sense in waiting).
      • We saw this same thing happen with Claws, slightly reversed. I absolutely abhor the animation for Eviscerate, so I didn't use it at all. Incidentally GB did, and came out with marginally better times, with a net average just that hair above (talking like 15-20/s total time average). That choice dynamically changed the goal line to be further than would be inherently possible by excluding the one power that added significantly to clear speed simply by being a short-range high-critical cone.

     

    At the end of it, while I encourage you to find the answers you seek in whatever means you want to tackle, this particular investment of time and energy is only going to produce a metric quantifiable by you in a vacuum state of your own choices. You are ... kind of in your own Twilight Zone right now where Brutes "don't make sense" and Tankers are "overpowered." This commitment to the cause would've been excellent to have had back during testing, but at this point you're unlikely to get many to join your efforts here since we've already been down this road.

    @Bill Z Bubba, luckily by comparing the same combo against itself using your own playstyle, you should be in a good spot for a "fair" comparison as there are less variables due to your choices (outside of say, stopping o use Taunt on the tank). Something like 6-10 missions on the same build with only the AT changing should be a good benchmark assuming the same strategies and the like (also assuming Brute and Tank Claws are the exact same outside of damage / inherent stuff).

     

    Having run the mission many times across all Scrapper sets, I did get sort of used to how many of them operate in similar gameplay loops so when KM came in and benefits from a much different game plan it threw me off until a second whole set of runs where I got much better times. Something as simple as going left instead of right at that "fork" halfway through the map or even how you pull the tighter areas can add up over time too.

    Weekly Discussion 58: Electric Blast

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    54 minutes ago, Eva Destruction said:

    As nearly everyone else has said, the end drain is useless unless you build around it.

     

    The set also suffers from a lack of a heavy-hitter.  Fast-snipe makes the lack a little less painful, but it still means the set lags behind most others in terms of ST damage, and it doesn't have great AoE to compensate. 

    Tbf, in a pure ST environment VS does work 

    Did tanks get overbuffed?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

    But will they over a 5 mission spread for each AT? I think not.

    I think so. 

     

    Even if its just 2 maps, across just 5 missions each the terrain will be different enough from start to finish with the spread (5-0 to 3-2) to impact times in a way that is not controlled.

    Weekly Discussion 58: Electric Blast

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Galaxy Brain

     

     

     

    All various threads I've been part of, but the last one is a very relevant quote related to End Drain vs certain ranks of enemy.

     

    The issues with elec blast can be summed up as: 

     

    1) Clunkiness

    Short Circuit, Thunderous Blast, and Voltaic Sentinel are all very slow powers for what they do. SC and TB are very slow to animate, and SC deals its damage over time to further slow down the process while TB does not do the correct damage. Sparky has a long animation with would be ok if you didn't have to CONSTANTLY re-summon the little guy. These three powers are highlights of the set, but end up being very clunky in practice due to very slow animations/constant application. 

    Not only is this very slow in today's game, but for a lightning-themed set its odd the powers are slow at all. At least the attacks *hit* instantly unlike most other blasts! If these got sped up, hit harder (either damage or end drain, other perks), or in Sparky's case lasted longer/stacked then it would be huge for the set.

     

     

    2) End Drain vs the World

    In the last quoted thread, I went over how end drain is not really.... worth it in the bread and butter attacks most of the time. You will usually defeat enemies far faster than you drain them, outside of specific End Drain powers. Not only is End Drain binary by nature of it being all or nothing for taking effect, but powers also either do a bit of drain or they are one-shot wonders themselves. 

     

    I'd rather a different secondary effect on a number of the powers with low ST drain and re-emphasize the heavy drain powers to be honest, if not have a chance for Critical Drain that @oedipus_tex had came up with a while back to actually leverage the effect on the majority of powers rather than just a few. As it stands, End Drain really only works if it is fast and constant like we see in Elec Control, and to do that we often see SC + X other power (Power Boost, Power Sink, Kinetics, Etc) which is honestly annoying since it makes any other pairing sub-par.

     

    An unsung part of elec blast though is the end-return. This only has a chance to occur, but if it were made much more consistent that could be something fun to lean into. Other suggestions such as applying a debuff that scales on lost endurance, bonus damage scaling on endurance (Proved possible by the prior Beta Dark Melee!), and the like would also be welcome. 

     

    Edit: adding in a possible "+End Cost" debuff when hit by the attacks would stack wonderfully too.

     

     

     

    3) Old Set vs New Themes

    Elec Blast is the oldest electrical primary, and it is lacking something that every set since has gotten: a Chain Power. As I mentioned in point 1, elec blast's unique powers are a ranged proper-nuke, a pseudo pet, and a PBAoE end drain but they all have their own issues... but the super iconic Chain Lightning is sadly not present in the set. Finding a way to fit that in there, even if it were attached to Voltaic Sentinel being active as @kiramon mentioned would be cool!

     

    In addition, the idea to have Aim have altered stats to include +End Mod would be sweet as well. Just something more to lean into the set's strengths on it's own rather than needing to double-dip into a paired Drain set.

     

     

    • Like 3

    [For Fun] Barrier Defense

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted

    1 hour ago, MTeague said:

    well.... I'd say the Thematic Defensive Niche is already filled by Energy Aura.   EA is basically already "Force Field Armor".

    That said.  Nothing wrong with asking for a second flavor of Force Field Armor, I suppose.  No armor set works quite like what you've proposed, that's for sure.

    I think a 2nd FF-type armor has room for sure. I mean, we have WP, Regen, and Invuln as 3 types of "naturally tough" or "healing factor" style powersets.

    • Like 1
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