Moonlighter

My assumption here is that global damage does affect proc damage? I will have to go test it maybe using a proc and Assault or something. I was under the impression that global damage did not affect procs, but if that was the case then Bio's damage should be mitigated by, not exaggerated by, proc heavy chains. Unless the Bio numbers are much more from the built in -Res and -Regen than the +Dam? . . . Okay, after some tests global damage does not appear to affect procs. Using Eagle's Claw with only the purple damage proc, I am seeing EC damage climbing when I activate Assault but the proc damage stays exactly the same either way. A simple test, but I would have to dismantle a build or rebuild from scratch to test more complex interactions. Anyway given that procs aren't affected by global damage the delta between Bio straight up and Bio without procs should be smaller than for other sets without as much global damage?

I don't know why the range change makes me so salty; it's just a game and I can just shelf the character and play one of my many other characters.

Thanks. A three minute benchmark is great and I can fine tune to get that. I am glad I can see good returns without having to making strings of procs, outside Scrapsnipes. An observation:, because I didn't go through the intellectual and emotional energy of theory-crafting proc usage to increase DPS, I don't like feeling forced to build that way to compete. If I had returned earlier and was bored of standard design patterns and had theory crafted and demonstrated the techniques I would likely have a different opinion and enjoy the option.

My newly tricked out incarnate EM/EA scrapper was getting good times on pylon tests, but comparable to MA and savage melee. I used Energy Aura since it is easy to build and doesn't have extra damage like Bio to skew the test, just a bit of recharge. I was seeing just under 2 mins with variance for all three. I am not sure what nihilii is doing to hit those numbers. I didn't use a scrappersnipe in my chain but I can't see accounting for 80 and 90 second numbers. (I totally believe it, I don't just have the knowledge of the tricks they use.) Edit: Oh it's probably Bio Armor. I was under the impression that damage procs are not multiplied by global damage?

My tests on a fully tricked out EM scrapper was that it was very competitive on Pylon tests, and was not lacking in AoE. My times did not seem lacking without the crits. While it does require you to line up the two attack combo for a shorter ET, it is not punishing like Dual Blades.

They added an AoE damage power to DM, at the cost of target cap reduction to Shadow Maul. Honesty I always thought effectively using the cone of Shadow Maul was one of those skill shots that made Shadow Maul different; it is so easy to mess up the cone line. Taking away the reward for skillful use of a narrow cone and adding a PBAoE which takes much less skill to execute makes me sad.

Let's talk about Dual Blades and the enforced 5% miss chance in the game. Is anyone else finding the the Attack Vitals chain is *wildly* variable because of the 5% miss chance? Like I am seeing a variance along the lines of 33%. If any of the four attacks in my chain miss, each of which is 5%, then it brutalizes my damage for that entire cycle. I am seeing times ranging from 2:20 up to 3:45 which is crazy variance. I have long thought that the 5% miss chance was terrible; a hold over from tabletop D&D? Most games don't do misses, and while I don't want to erase the build meta around needing to build for accuracy I feel that 5% is not a good experience, It really punishes combo sets, and is unnecessary. While I'd love to just let the hit chance hit 100% if built correctly, even changing this to have a ceiling of 98% or 99% would be better. As an aside, I have no idea how people play stalkers. Missing an Assassin's Strike drives me nuts, and it happens 20, 30, 40 times in a night depending on the havoc I am wreaking.

Next post: I am testing claws trying to see if I can get some decent pylon times. Not top, but decent. I did okay with DB (more on that in another post) but my claw times are bad. Like 3:45 with full incarnates. Also I though with energize I would be okay on Endurance. I was wrong, even keeping my defense oriented toggles off. I must be doing something wrong; I have been well above the 3 minute mark with incarnates. My attack chain is Follow Up - Slash - Focus - Shockwave - Follow Up - Slash - Focus - Zapp I tried to keep recharge as low as possible to use procs, and was hoping that my electric field with Follow Up's damage boost would be a nice add. Here is the build. (My first change would be to go back to jumping, both because Hover is a pig and because Grounded.) Thoughts? http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1503&c=702&a=1404&f=HEX&dc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

I don't know how I feel about my Martial Arts builds becoming flavor of the month. 😝

Not soft capped? Do you have enough regen to recover from strings of pylon hits on Shield?

So I have a Savage/Bio scrapper sub two minutes using Savage Slash - Viscious Slash - Savage Slash - Maiming Slash. Not a proc mule. Note that on /Bio, Blood Thirst is a DPS loss since the 40% damage boost is so dilluted that the frenzy charges don't do anything useful. 2.2 activation; woof. I want to test if Hemorrhage is worth it now, but I am not sure where to start? Thoughts?

Wow no accuracy, no recharge? No wonder you need a filler. It makes me sad that proc mules are *that* effective. Also I don't know that this build would work with no accuracy on +4 content with only Kismet, Tactics, and globals? Have you played it in other content?

Yes, that leaves MA with -Res procs in two out of three attacks in that chain. I didn't change out EC for procs after the change, still I am getting no where near those times and I don't think those procs would account for that much difference?

Oh I see. Yes, I agree that in a game with such a dynamic play with full groups the desire to move to gimmicks that give WoW like attack chains is not needed and detracts from play. Reacting to content with the correct attack for the situation should be more about what you are fighting. I love WoW but the enforcement of the holy trinity means that complicated attack chains are needed in that game to keep things interesting.

I don't know if "this is now as good as Mace" is a reasonable benchmark to expect without being disappointed. After previous TW, Mace was an outlier. Not enough that I want nerfs, but enough that I don't need sets to do that level of DPS. On another note, what tricks are you using to get *half* my time? Is Bio making that much of a difference? Or are there proc tricks that are standard that I need to learn?

Best time for my MA/Shield so far is 2:19. Edit: 2:16. Edit: Ugh don't make me take the epic snipe. Changing up my chain landed me at 2:08. Update: Grrr. New day and I can't replicate the 2:08. I don't know what series of crits and procs led to that last night, or whether there was chip damage from a Vanguard that I missed.

I spend some time on an Energy Melee/Energy Aura scrapper specifically to test with no secondary damage boost and I also skipped snipes. My best time was 3:10 kill. Of course there is a regen tick right at the 3 minute mark, so if you miss that you might add 10 seconds to make up for it. This is with incarnate Alpha - Hybrid - Interface. My chain was TF - ET - EP - BS - EP repeat. It didn't look to me like using the long ET was the right call, especially where sometimes EP seemed to proc a short ET and I don't know exactly why. I tried both Degen and Reactive; I got better times with Degenerative for Interface. I could probably make better use of time and bring down the time with tweaking. As a point of reference my MA/Ninja had a best time of 2:58. Edit: After more fine tuning with EM/EA I hit 3:01, I suspect it was actually one second less because I seemed to just beat that 3 minute regen tick.

Just disable it in missions and PvP zones.

Okay, I am trying to figure out why this change feels so bad. Is this a real issue, or an annoyance at changing ingrained habits like moving my travel powers to another hotkey? I wanted to add more feedback. ~ The change so that the portal exit comes out at the base portals is so good. It helps alleviate the sheer annoyance of this change. One thing in the past that I really hated is if I used the base portal and then hit, say, Brickstown instead of Steel then not only do I have an annoying load screen, but getting stuck out in the edge of Bricks with my portal on cooldown was just terrible. At least now I zone in at the portal so I can click it and go right back in when I invariably realize I clicked bad or worse, forgot something. It is also good because I can predict where I will come out. Sure some zones I just know where I will come out, but others are just much clearer. Coming out into Atlas near the base portal near the trainer is so much better than lol here you are in the far corner. The only lose is King's Row; maybe the base portal can be brought down to Blue Steel level rather than the top of the building? ~ I realize the I really hate the "how do you get there?" mini-game that is pre and post macro. I do not relish having a whole hot bar now of specialized portal buttons, each on their own cooldowns and all with there own set of rules about where they do. Does the Ouros exit go to Bricks? Is Peregrine on the T? Can I get to Steel through the tunnel? Where is the entrance to Faultline again? I wasn't expecting to group with my just now logged on friend and I *just* zoned three times in this arc and now most of the stuff is on cool down. This whole process with its overlapping cooldowns and the requirement of an additional bar of icons, is a terrible experience for me. So everytime someone says "yes but that area can be accessed this way" and yes but I use this side corner of the game for crafting" and "yes but you just have to pay 1 million influence on every alt to solve that problem lol poor noob influence is easy" it just makes the game worse. Anyway some more thoughts.

My reading is that this is about messing up someone's build for a not significant change. If Darion doesn't want to rethink their entire build I get that. Mine happens to have a Scrapper set there, so my build in unaffected. But I get it. On the other hand, the melee purple set has plenty of homes in MA so rebuilding (if forced to due to respec) shouldn't be that big of a deal. I understand EC is a great home for a proc though. When using it on Peregrine, I can hit 2-3 targets if I re-position in normal play. More if I am farming melee enemies with a taunt aura. This is a nice QoL change, but it doesn't suddenly make MA good for AoE. I support it, as I will get in a good number of extra splash hits in typical high level play, and that's great.

Okay after playing several arcs testing other stuff I can share my experiences. Not being able to instantly leave a combat area is a good change. Not going to lie, not being able to go to the base from the outside felt bad. Annoying. I want to support changes, but nothing about this in anyway added to enjoyment of me or my group. ~ On live I actually started doing the old Talos, Bricks, and FF arcs that make you zone every mission as they were tolerable with the ability to come out of the mission and hit the base. Now I would likely start skipping those again; they are *so* much worse on test. I started one and the constant zoning is bad enough when you start by zipping into the base and then zone and travel. On test starting these was super annoying and probably removed that content from my play cycle. Which sucks because I don't want to fill those 30-45 holes at AE. ~ Making small adjustments to costumes if I messed something up is much worse, and this actually happened to me on test. ~ I just do not want the extra time waiting around for team mates to level when grouping. Waiting for team member three to run through the zone to grab that key power at 18 while we are waiting in the mission entrance is not something that makes for a better game. ~ I found I had plenty of time to appreciate travel powers when I came out of the base portal and zoomed across the zone to the mission. Adding an after mission component to traveling to the base portal is honestly not adding any enjoyment or coolness to the game like I hoped. ~ I didn't get a chance to do serious crafting on test, but I *think* this will be okay if the Rikti War Zone portal comes out at the base portal in the Vanguard base, since I can go there and have much of what I need. I can use the base portal to grab things from base bins.

I spent time with playing a /Nin blaster using a build I deleted previously because Ninja wasn't good. The melee attacks feel good. Powerful, Soaring Dragon hits like a truck, and the Lotus Drops is a fine, typical melee PBAoE. Thumbs up. Immobilizing Dart seems out of place with the "Back Widow" wrist fire; Either a shuriken throw or a thrown dart like the starting power seems more appropriate. Any chance for an alternate animation? The click sustain power, Kuji-in Toh, felt weak in missions. I was playing against even level Banished Pantheon with a smattering of defense (like 10%) and it was having trouble keeping up. It doesn't work like Absorb which starts the fight stacking a bit higher to dull initial attacks, so time to kill in strictly inferior to Absorb clicks and the power requires click management. To compensate maybe have it fire off a small heal and endurance boost when it fires? Choking Powder seemed effective, and Blinding Powder played like I expected, but I have a lot of experience with that power and practice lining it up. Blinding Powder had its sleep boosted which is unfortunate in an AT that focuses on big AoEs. I would have rather seen an increased chance of confuse. Maybe 75%. Once you can slot it with contagion then it's sort of good. After running /Ninj scrappers it seemed weird to not have extra movement in Shinobi. The character felt slow, but realize that's in comparison to another /Ninja experience. I really disliked having my -Res for the set being in Smoke Flash. If I want to leverage it, I can't save that power for emergencies and running up to a foe and opening with Smoke Flash seems to me counter-intuitive to how the power's escape danger focus. Maybe have -Res in another power instead?

I am seeing the gift opening animation as I run around as well. A new character, not copied. It feel weird to be using Shinobi and not be faster, as my main is a /Ninjistu melee so I am not a good judge.

So I am trying to test a bug fix: Hail of Bullets (Blaster): Fixed an issue where the blaster version of this power would not trigger the base lethal damage in PvE. I am not seeing a significant change between live and beta. The numbers seem similar, keeping in mind that between Defiance and my Martial random buff it can be hard to judge. On live I see a bunch of numbers like 6 12 and I see the same ratios on test. I tried it with secondary effect (Fire/Acid/Ice) turned off, then on. Can anyone figure out what difference we should be looking for here? [3:49 PM]

The -4000 hp debuff also reduces Regeneration by the same ratio since that is based off total hit points, so you have to account for that. And the reason you want to use an Electric Sentinel to break the 500 DPS mark is that it is pretty much accepted that Elec is weak so it is a bigger head turn than doing it with Ice.