Gigaburger
-
Posts
13 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Store
Articles
Patch Notes
Posts posted by Gigaburger
-
-
Just did mission 3 of Watkins story arc. When I got to the final room with raverobber in it, whenever I stepped onto (or hovered slightly above) the concrete floor, my character stuttered massively. It was nearly unplayable but I realized I could just walk around on the metal flooring and pull targets.
-
Testing on a level 29 mercs/traps MM using only SO's. Going on +0/x0. Missions 1 and 2 were fairly easy, as you'd expect for a MM. Caltrops and poison gas ensure nothing really got to even touch me, not even the zoombies. Though I did get hit by 1 zoombie explosion, and it wasn't nearly as punishing as on live, where one explosion could kill half of my henchman. But it did seriously wound my henchman and I had to react quickly to every zoombie afterwards to prevent a wipe.
Mission 3: There is a bug, at least on this test. I'd have to replay it to find out if it is consistent. In the final room, where Raverobber is located, the entire concrete floored area makes my character stutter an insane amount. Not my henchman, not the mobs, but just my character. It is nearly unplayabled. Hovering slightly above ground, you will still stutter. So going about 5 feet off the ground was necessary for me to react, however as a /traps character this presented problems.
Raverobber himself was quite fun and challenging for me. He managed to kill my commando, all the T1s, and a T2 before I could down him. Luckily with the MM changes I was able to prevent a wipe by resummoning and equipping, while also not going completely empty on endurance and still capable of using other abilities to slow him down.
Have not gotten any further so far.-
1
-
-
7 hours ago, Elthenar said:
You know your set is weak when you could literally double its damage across the board and it would still only be middle of the pack
Double mercs damage across the board, and their single target damage would change from last place, to second-to-last place lol.
-
1
-
1
-
-
12 minutes ago, Elthenar said:
My post was meant as the simplest possible way to make them competitive in the short term with a absolute minimum of dev time spent. It doesn't cover other relative shortcomings, like not having the extra pet to dump the IO auras into, but at the end of the day damage can make up for quite a lot. Plus, If my version of Serum was put in, the passive bonus would help boost survivability to near that of beasts, which are pretty tanky.
I gotta agree with you here. We are not going to see a merc overhaul for a long time. That would take so many man hours from the devs and I don't want to rush them into it. I just want something that makes them bearable to play. Thats it. I really do love how they almost never stop firing. I love the showers of bullet casings. I love their aesthetic and I LOVE my memories as a young teenager who mained a mercenary mastermind back on live. I will be perfectly happy with a simple damage buff if that is all that the HC dev team can do for us in the near future. Recharge times, I have no idea if they can mess with that without breaking the AI or not. I am not educated in any of this stuff. All I want is to be able to join a group and feel like I am contributing in some way other than my third-rate support abilities because my merc primary quite literally is nearly useless.
There is no worse feeling, when your group is mowing down mobs, and a straggler runs off, and you sit there and struggle to kill (arrest?) it. It is frankly embarrassing. I am just begging for any simple change that can make them bearable to play in the short term. I will gladly, and patiently, wait for whatever changes they decide to make for masterminds in the future if I can just play my favorite powerset and not feel like a waste of a party slot. -
12 minutes ago, Elthenar said:
I wouldn't touch the recharge times. The reason that they made pet powers have an unmodifiable recharge is because the AI was completely bonkers. Up until Masterminds in general get a balance pass, the simplest solution is to determine what role Mercs should play and buff their powers accordingly. Since fiddling with the recharge rates is likely impractical, that kind of rules out building them around the CC of the Spec Ops. So I would simply up their damage to a competitive level. My own thoughts would be to make them a strong single target set because of the powerset of the spec ops.
While their damage overall is exceptionally feeble, it is the spec ops that are the biggest failure. They have 8 powers, not counting brawl, and only 4 of them attacks. 1 of those attacks is rifle butt and none are AOE. Their other powers are the largely irrelevant stealth, web grenade, flashbang and tear gas. Web Grenade is somewhat useful but flashbang and tear gas are absurdly useless. So you have tier 2 pets that don't do damage, have little defensive ability and weak, unreliable CC. Until someone has to the time to do a deep dive and completely rework mercs, IMO the best option is to give the spec ops a massive damage boost. I would do it by making SCAR snipe hit like a truck. They are Spec Ops, let that snipe be their calling card. A damage value of 120 points or so wouldn't be out of line.
After that, simply increase the base damage of the soldiers and Commando (with an emphasis on their single target attacks) to get their single target near the top and not worry too much about their AOE rank.
The other big problem with an easy fix is Serum. As it stands it is much to great of a cooldown for too little reward. My own solution would be to add a reasonably strong passive effect to it, similar to Fortify Pack with Beasts. I would give them a permanent, enhancable defensive bonus. I would lean towards defense, because it would give players a reason to devote slots to Serum without having a second resist bonus attached to the same power.
The net result would be a top of the line single target set with middle of the road AOE and solid to great defenses. Given that they don't offer much besides ranged damage, compared to a set like bests with strong -res built in, that sounds fairly balanced IMO.
So instead of changing the recharge of LRM from 4 minutes, make it a literal nuke in terms of damage?
I am oddly okay with this.
-
4 minutes ago, Redlynne said:
The real problem with Mercenaries is that it was probably the FIRST Mastermind powerset that was built.
Full stop.
That means that what Cryptic Studios had "available" for being repurposed into the Mercenaries themselves was OLD LEGACY powers that had been used by Assault Rifle for Blasters and were basically the Tommygun attack powers used by a lot of Family and Mooks NPCs. Later on, Assault Rifle for Blasters (and Defenders, eventually) got a "tune up" to be less stupid with their animation times and recharge and so on ... but that update to the tuning of powers never extended to Mercenaries, which had to (polite cough) ... soldier on ... (ahem!) with their poor game design after everything else that came after them were designed much better. So the Mercs' attack powers are all OLD LEGACY powers that were meant for NPCs, where no one is going to mind if they underperform which have never been given a balancing pass to bring them up to par with the rest of the Mastermind primaries.
In other words, the real problem with Mercenaries can basically laid at the feet of being first NEVER getting adjusted to match everyone else ... leaving them stuck with obsolete antiquated terrible attack powers that work "fine" for Foe NPCs (who tend to be more numerous so as to "make it up in volume" for their lack of individual firepower) but which land on absolutely abysmal breakpoints (that all break unfavorably away from Mercenaries being useful/effective in combat) ... and they have never even once received a balance pass to bring them up to snuff.
Cryptic Studios never did it.
Paragon Studios never did it.
... and now it's up to Homecoming to finally get around to doing it when they can find the ever scarce resource of Developer Time™ to do it.
Personally speaking, I'm of the opinion that twiddling some of the recharge times on the OLD LEGACY obsolete powers along with basically DOUBLING the base damage of every damaging power that Mercenaries have(!) ought to be sufficient to bring them up to par with the other Mastermind primary powersets. That way, you would only be editing the excel spreadsheet parameters that govern what they're "allowed to do" rather than trying to reprogram all of their animations and deal with the huge can of worm that THAT would open for things to start breaking all over the place. Yes, it would mean that the OLD LEGACY obsolete animations would be kept, but at least they wouldn't all be AS SUBSTANDARD as they currently are.
Point being, if you can "better balance" the animation to recharge times for the Mercenaries attack powers, so as to reduce idle time waiting for attacks to finish recharging, while simultaneously increasing the damage that each power delivers ... that then would cause a marked enough improvement in the damage output of Mercenaries to keep them from gnawing a hole through the bottom of the barrel like they've been doing ever since the release of City of Villains.
After that, you basically just need to fix Serum into not being a Joke/Trap power that's a complete and utter waste of a power pick ... and you'll be good to go.
I'm thinking that would be the simplest, cheapest and perhaps most effective way to "fix" Mercenaries so they aren't weighed down as badly by the legacy of their abysmally bad game design parameters that they got stuck with in the first place which have NEVER BEEN MOVED.
Is it a "perfect" solution? No.
Would it be an "adequate" solution? I'd like to think it would be ...
All I've ever wanted was recharge times and damage numbers to be improved. I'm looking for a quick and simple fix myself. I'm okay without the medic changes for now but ofcourse I believe mercs need an overhaul at some point. But for now, I'll take whatever buff we can get, small or large. Fingers crossed a developer will take it into their hands and be our savior!
-
This is what we need to be even remotely bearable as merc MMs. People do not realize just how terrible playing mercs is. Whenever I join a team I feel like a complete burden and it's hard to enjoy the game. But I enjoy mercs thematically and it was my main back on Live. I've seen these charts and I feel like even they do not do complete justice.
This chart which I got from the discord from @黒の色 (Dunno if he was the creator or not) shows the ST dps breakdown of a beast mm. Note that this includes the dps of the MM themself which is the difference between the total of this chart and the total of the above chart. The TIER 1 wolves alone do roughly the same DPS as the ENTIRETY of the mercs lineup. The tier 2s alone do almost 30 dps MORE than the entire merc lineup. I think this does a pretty good job of showing our plight and just how desperate we are for ANY changes at all. No one wants to feel like a burden to their team, and a merc MM is essentially just his secondary set as the damage they are outputting from the mercs is almost completely negligible.
I really hope we can get some love soon because it is so hard to force myself to play this game when my favorite powerset is so far behind every other set. -
4 hours ago, kiramon said:
Are you wanting attacks? Procs?
You can be a proc monster with capped defense with pet bubbles...
Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.7.2.10
https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designerClick this DataLink to open the build!
Level 50 Magic Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Robotics
Secondary Power Set: Trick Arrow
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Concealment
Ancillary Pool: Mu MasteryVillain Profile:
Level 1: Battle Drones -- SprMarofS-Dmg/EndRdx(A), SprMarofS-Acc/EndRdx(7), SprMarofS-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), SprMarofS-Dmg(9), SvrRgh-PetResDam(11), EdcoftheM-PetDef(11)
Level 1: Entangling Arrow -- TraoftheH-Acc/Rchg(A), TraoftheH-EndRdx/Immob(40), TraoftheH-Acc/EndRdx(43), TraoftheH-Immob/Acc(43), TraoftheH-Acc/Immob/Rchg(43), TraoftheH-Dam%(46)
Level 2: Pulse Rifle Burst -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(A), SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(19), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(23), FrcFdb-Rechg%(25)
Level 4: Glue Arrow -- TmpRdn-Rng/Slow(A), TmpRdn-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(17)
Level 6: Equip Robot -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 10: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 12: Protector Bots -- SprMarofS-EndRdx/+Resist/+Regen(A), SprMarofS-Acc/Dmg(13), ExpRnf-+Res(Pets)(13), CaltoArm-+Def(Pets)(15), DefBuff-I(15), DefBuff-I(17)
Level 14: Tactics -- HO:Cyto(A)
Level 16: Poison Gas Arrow -- FrtHyp-Sleep/Rchg(A), FrtHyp-Plct%(34), FrtHyp-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(34), FrtHyp-Acc/Rchg(34), FrtHyp-Sleep/EndRdx(37)
Level 18: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Acid Arrow -- JvlVll-Dam%(A), Bmbdmt-+FireDmg(25), PstBls-Dam%(31), TchofLadG-%Dam(33), ShlBrk-%Dam(33), ShlBrk-Acc/DefDeb(33)
Level 22: Tough -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(23)
Level 24: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Ksm-ToHit+(40), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(40)
Level 26: Assault Bot -- SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg(A), SprCmmoft-Dmg/EndRdx(27), SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(27), SprCmmoft-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), SprCmmoft-Rchg/PetAoEDef(31)
Level 28: Disruption Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 30: Stealth -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Upgrade Robot -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Oil Slick Arrow -- JvlVll-Dam%(A), PstBls-Dam%(36), Bmbdmt-+FireDmg(36), TchofLadG-%Dam(36), ImpSwf-Dam%(37), Rgn-Knock%(37)
Level 38: EMP Arrow -- BslGaz-Acc/Hold(A), BslGaz-Acc/Rchg(39), BslGaz-Rchg/Hold(39), BslGaz-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(39)
Level 41: Charged Armor -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(42), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(42), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(42)
Level 44: Electrifying Fences -- JvlVll-Dam%(A), Bmbdmt-+FireDmg(45), PstBls-Dam%(45), TraoftheH-Dam%(45), PwrTrns-+Heal(46), JvlVll-Acc/Dmg(46)
Level 47: Electric Shackles -- UnbCns-Dam%(A), NrnSht-Dam%(48), GhsWdwEmb-Dam%(48), GldNet-Dam%(7), Apc-Dam%(19), Apc-Acc/Rchg(48)
Level 49: Thunder Strike -- Obl-%Dam(A), Arm-Dam%(50), ExpStr-Dam%(50), ScrDrv-Dam%(3), FrcFdb-Rechg%(3), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(50)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Mrc-Rcvry+(5)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(5)
Level 1: Battle Drone
Level 12: Protector Bot
Level 26: Assault Bot
Level 50: Agility Core Paragon
------------
------------
Set Bonus Totals:- 4% DamageBuff(Smashing)
- 4% DamageBuff(Lethal)
- 4% DamageBuff(Fire)
- 4% DamageBuff(Cold)
- 4% DamageBuff(Energy)
- 4% DamageBuff(Negative)
- 4% DamageBuff(Toxic)
- 4% DamageBuff(Psionic)
- 10% Defense
- 10.06% Defense(Smashing)
- 10.06% Defense(Lethal)
- 6% Defense(Fire)
- 6% Defense(Cold)
- 15.06% Defense(Energy)
- 15.06% Defense(Negative)
- 6% Defense(Psionic)
- 14.13% Defense(Melee)
- 12.88% Defense(Ranged)
- 21% Defense(AoE)
- 2.5% Enhancement(Max EnduranceDiscount)
- 77.5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
- 39% Enhancement(Accuracy)
- 5% Enhancement(Immobilized)
- 7.5% SpeedFlying
- 39.15 HP (4.88%) HitPoints
- 7.5% JumpHeight
- 7.5% SpeedJumping
- MezResist(Confused) 50%
- MezResist(Held) 50%
- MezResist(Immobilized) 50%
- MezResist(Sleep) 50%
- MezResist(Stunned) 50%
- MezResist(Terrorized) 50%
- MezResist(Teleport) 100% (20% chance)
- 16% (0.27 End/sec) Recovery
- 176% (5.89 HP/sec) Regeneration
- 15% ResEffect(SpeedFlying)
- 15% ResEffect(RechargeTime)
- 15% ResEffect(SpeedRunning)
- 49.75% Resistance(Smashing)
- 49.75% Resistance(Lethal)
- 52% Resistance(Fire)
- 52% Resistance(Cold)
- 42.25% Resistance(Energy)
- 42.25% Resistance(Negative)
- 46% Resistance(Toxic)
- 46% Resistance(Psionic)
- 7.5% SpeedRunning
I honestly don't know how to slot TA at all. I'm not home yet so I'll take a look at this build when I am.
Honestly what I think I wanna go for is juggling mobs using oil slick and bonfire from heat mastery. With KB - KD slotted, I could both keep mobs locked down via KD to stack assbots burn patches and help my survivability. But I don't really know what my uptime would be on those abilities.
This will be my first serious build as well so I'm definitely not sure what set bonuses to aim for, and what is actually obtainable as end results go.
-
Itll be my first time going to 50 with TA on any toon. But I was enjoying it on my level 38 beast/TA and didn't really enjoy traps in my bots/traps mm. So I wanted to see how well I can make it work. I'm thinking of grabbing bonfire instead of electric fences, strictly to keep with the burning patches theme between oil slick arrow and incendiary missiles.
I'm aware I'm going to have a rough time, so don't try to talk me out of it! I'm just here to have fun.
-
6 minutes ago, Zauhesi said:
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that having an AT that’s just a rip-off of mercs MMs with twice as many henchmen is still balanced. Mercs are just utter garbage, and that’s me being polite. Terrible damage, terrible survivability, honestly the only things that this set offers are extra bodyguard (which we all know will last 10 seconds before your pets get wiped) and heavy ammo. That being said, however, if making this heavy ammunitions thing is too hard I’d still like to see the AT with some generic copy pasted epic pool (just as the powersets were copy pasted from mercs lol).
The only thing that can make utter garbage useable is twice as much garbage. I read that in a fortune cookie once I think. Vote yes for Mercermind,
-
1
-
-
Doubling the dps of mercs puts it more closely in line with necro. It still wouldnt come close to thugs, but its a start. I approve.
-
1
-
-
One of my favorite parts about robots was that they have the jets when you use group fly. Super cool, and makes traversing mission maps without resummoning much easier. However, pets do not fly as fast as us, and I suspect its because of our inherent swiftness that upgrades flight speed a smidgen. Would love to not have to fly backwards and stop-go-stop-go all of the time.
-
7
-
Focused Feedback: Power Changes (Build 1)
in [Open Beta] Focused Feedback
Posted
Believe it or not they've spoken in discord that they will likely never make upgrades automatic, for the simple fact that they want to promote keeping pets alive instead of making them disposable. We are likely to see more changes to balance out these reduced cooldowns.