Shin Magmus

I appreciate the effort trying to teach forumites that DPA actually matters, and damage / time is the foundation of real math for real gameplay, but they'll continue to not learn this and ignore this. The SS thread was full of people doing bad math that ignored basic concepts like animation times and even how much Fury Brutes have 90% of the time. You can't teach people who don't want to learn.

You can see the player counts and live player graphs on the HC Discord, it is indeed dwindling. It has upwards spikes after a new update but it falls off harder and faster each time. Public data.

Stalkers having the option to take Lightning Clap at all is a huge W in a sea of L's. It's a bit rough how they got it, but I think I can sufficiently compensate for the loss of Thunder Strike by taking an additional pool or epic AoE that I otherwise wouldn't. Stalkers can now use a "lightning fast" single target attack chain incorporating Fast AS, Lightning Clap (or Thunder Strike if you prefer), Zapp, and Chain Induction (it's an AoE but it's still good in the ST chain). This will be fun, and fun is good. "Always seek to make the game more fun first and foremost" - wise words someone once said.

With my current build, my Dark/Claws Tanker has Obscure Sustenance to about an 18s CD: 6-slotted with Preventive Medicine. This is my Dark/Claws Tanker, and although I have some meager opportunities for FFB procs, I don't have any. The build has plenty of slotted Slow resistance so my Recharge rate remains pretty constant regardless of what I'm fighting and what debuffs enemies have. The current Open Beta patch nerfs this from 18s to 54s by tripling the power's base CD. I'm now going to get the strong portion of Obscure Sustenance for 10s, the middle portion (nerfed) for the next 20s, and then a laughably weak buff (the Endmod for example is less than 1/2 of Stamina's value) for the next 24s minimum on an endgame build. If you're using this button to refill Endurance and you have an extremely optimized build, it can be slightly buffed comparing Version 2 to Version 3, but it is still very nerfed compared to Version 1 (Live). However, if you are taking your Heal for Healing and looking at HP/sec, its been nerfed again. I might even respec right now to ditch the power ahead of the patch release.

They just made it worse. Open Beta newest patch has the Regen and Recovery values on Obscure Sustenance nerfed again. Obscure Sustenance cooldown increased from 1 minute to 3 minutes. Obscure Sustenance can now be used 1/3rd as often, meaning that the initial buff values are a super rare treat and basically worthless. It went from 250% Flat Regen, down to with 408% Regen for only 10s, then 236% Regen for the next 20s, then only 100% Regen for the entire remaining duration of the power. 100% Regen is 0.4x the strength of the 250% Regen, which itself was already a nerf that was going to make me Respec out of the power. I have no fucking idea what they are doing: this is incomprehensible. Dark Regeneration is now about 11x better than Obscure Sustenance. VERSION 1: Playable on Live. This power had a 60s CD so you could refresh the strong buffs. VERSION 2: The nerfs that were being discussed. VERSION 3: Nerfed again for no defensible reason, with a cooldown increase to 3 minutes or 180s. You can now barely even use the power and are stuck for most of the time in the crippled version of its strength.

Testing right now, you should double-check your text please. There's a lot of text errors in the game still and even in the patch notes, but this one should've been easy to spot even with just one second review or a second pair of eyes. The same issue is present for both Thunder Strike and Lightning Clap:

The fact that anyone here is making disingenuous factually wrong claims like this, ignoring the fact that if someone were AFK farming they: 1: Couldn't even click Rage at all because their Auto power would be Foot Stomp 2: SHOULD be using Spines or Rad Melee for the extra passive impact of a damage aura 3: Would be picking a commonly-known mid-tier set in Super Strength that hasn't been relevant in AE farming at all for a decade ...is insane to me. This kind of easily-refuted nonsense is why nobody takes the forums seriously. I'm not attacking you, just your incredibly bad "argument." UNLEASHED MIGHT WOULD BE A BUFF TO SUPER STRENGTH AFK FARMERS.

Mr. President, another complete rollback has hit the nothingburger patch!

First time? I've had characters eviscerated for no reason too, to say nothing of the Beanbag incident. Maybe direct your feedback towards the devs constantly scrapping changes instead of finding compromises or listening to player feedback?

The HC devs sure do deliberately nerf proc rates in powers A LOT for a team ostensibly balancing around SO's. But hey, saying one thing and doing another is cool.

Incorrect, the devs turned a niche power, that wastes a slot on KB-to-KD, into a worthwhile AoE attack that can be used all the time. This new attack has some trade-offs, but it still knocks 5 enemies down and therefore still partially mitigates the Rage crash. Feels fine to me.

Just so you know, you're doing this math with both an incorrect assumption and an incorrect baseline. It's not that Brutes "need" a certain amount of Fury. It's actually that Brutes will have, are balanced around, and should be accounted for having: ~80 Fury at all times or ~160% dmg buff. The very first step of all your math should be Brute damage scale + 160% dmg from Fury + whatever %dmg from enhancements (could be very low on procc'd out attacks obviously, varies by build), and then you start adding damage buffs from powers like Rage or Unleashed Might to make comparisons. Hopefully that clears things up, this is how the game works so it's also how the game needs to be balanced. Brute self +dmg scales on many melee set powers have actually been too low this entire time, because the math doesn't account for Fury, which means Brutes have always gotten proportionately much less benefit from clicking powers like Build Up, and indeed from using Rage. Brutes should have always had a significantly higher self +dmg value on Build Up than Scrappers or Blasters just for it to math out to be proportionately even. This was ignored, and honestly Brutes are about to get defensive scalar increases so I'm willing to just not bring it up anymore because there's no way the devs would also buff Brute offense now... even if the math is still wrong... even if Brutes have deserved it for almost 2 decades.

This thread is going to get GoogleMoogled like fucking crazy guys.

I'm happy for you, or... sorry that happened.

Holy shit, change your icon stacking to Numeric yesterday. Right click on those icons and change the stacking style. It would make Consume take 1/7th the UI space.

I agree with the party people in the house: friendship hug! The Rage Crash seems a widdle bit harsh, the -Def and -Res numbers are just a tad too high. I am asking my favorite devs to please take a second look and maybe think about changing it, and my favorite moderators to not delete our comments.

And numbers!

Current Unstoppable is a way to win a fight that you'd absolutely otherwise lose, against enemies dealing exotic damage that you aren't capped to. A lot of times it happens on small teams or bad teams, but you might have to tank the 100% Energy dmg mobs and you sure as heck don't have permanent 90% Energy Res, so Unstoppable means you can not die to them now and win this fight (but probably die later, hopefully when it doesn't matter and the hard stuff is over.)

Curses, GoogleMoogled again.

It's a self-imposed problem created by the devs committing to giving this AS, this one AS, unique effects that could require enhancing and enable such procs. They could've made the set just have Sandman's Whisper on Stalkers and swapped something else out. Also this is very distinct from Street Justice and Dual Blades, where the AS absolutely has to be part of combos and grant combo points otherwise Stalkers would be handicapped and slowed down when using these sets relative to Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers. Actual powerset-defining mechanics (that can't be enhanced) are perfectly fine to be on AS, but Sleeps and -Res debuffs aren't. Sonic Melee is already out in the wild though in its current state, so now this self-imposed problem needs solving.

I think the real reason that the buff was implemented the way it is, is so that other Sentinels on the team are punished less by being locked out of the ability to cast Vulnerability now. Sentinel damage was buffed, and it was buffed in a way where you get more damage in situations where you can't (or are too dumb to) cast Vulnerability. It's a buff that is stronger on weaker team comps or weaker players, and that seems pretty okay to me. This sidesteps the issue that Sentinels, and only Sentinels, have with their inherent on teams and especially on Leagues.

When a power has multiple "stats" but the devs don't want to allow players to slot in more procs or certain specific procs, they do this. If you use a Power Boost effect or have a Sleep-boosting Alpha slotted etc., then the Sleep will be enhanced. But you can't make your AS self-heal you or Placate enemies via procs. Earth Control has some similar stuff going on where the set is banned from being allowed to slot Achilles' Heel procs, very much the same thing. Probably not a bug but intended.

I 1-star everyone who says any derivative of "sitter looking for farm" in LFG and make my note about that. I support your endeavors and your desire for UI improvements.

Really the issue was, and is, what others echoed in many different threads already: 30s and 40s durations are too low. People weren't upset about the powers being weaker in exchange for not crashing: that's expected and just normal balancing. People were upset about durations too short to last through most of the use-cases for these powers, or even more than 2 full spawns on common teams/content. If the minimum duration for every T9 power (except MoG) was 60s, I think these changes would have gone over much better.

Given what Consume does and the fact that Burn exists in the same set, I'm not that concerned with procs in Consume. It is objectively another proc nerf but procs were bad in it already. That said, I *am* concerned that this is going to be a "refresh stacks" power without the accompanying UI element that Psy Armor is getting. A circle around the Consume power icon that alerts you to when the stacks are going to expire is something I think this powerset deserves; Just copy what's being implemented in Psy Armor.