Epsilon Assassin

It is WD/Char/Lance/Strangler. It's pretty much the only spike chain, possibly only dark could do something similar, that had the potential to 100-0 an HP capped blaster. I have the exact numbers, Mallex did Dark on Stream and I believe Alou did Ice. The problem isn't necessarily whether or not the damage is more or less, it's whether the application of the power in game allows for a defined niche. Plant still likely retains a 1-200 damage burst advantage, but that wont 100-0 a sent or a blaster, while the other three listed secondaries can 100-0 1606 toons already. As it stands, on test Plant lost the niche ability to spike blasters and sents, while on live it has it to some extent. As I mentioned earlier, it's a good debate to have whether that sort of spike damage is good for the game, but this nerf does hit plant pretty hard, when plant is already a fairly weak secondary in most pvp scenarios.

After doing some actual testing on the Toxins. My current combo deals approximately 397 damage with Toxins. On test it deals 277. Personally, this makes plant outright worse then Martial, EM and TA. All of these can essentially one combo 1606 toons. Plants only advantage was, based on Absorb Ticks, Procs and Travel time, the ability to one combo Blasters and Sents. With this damage nerf it's no longer a possibility, effectively removing one of its only two strengths. The only strength it has remaining is the ability for Strangler to simply be a better Spirit Shark Jaws for spike chain timings. All of the above secondaries bring effectively the same damage (Or more in some cases), as well as a plethora of utility. Whether or not the change is good, is debatable. On the plus side, getting one combo'd from full to zero is probably not good (But it exists for 1606 toons anyways, so?), and it could deserve a nerf on that front. On the other hand though, this change does remove plant as a competitive secondary. My question is whether the nerf to Toxins specifically should be done now, instead of postponing it for an indefinite amount of time where the overwhelming dominance of TA, and to a lesser degree, EM and Martial, is addressed to bring them in line as a whole instead of cutting down the viable blaster secondaries from 5 to 3 in a single patch.

Due to the inherent nature of how controllers work, while the damage value doesn't change, your damage potential is tied to your cc duration and how many attacks you can get off while the target is held. Fixing the cc duration, while needed, also means that the damage my controller can do goes down dramatically as I have much less time to leverage Containment's critical damage portion.

rip the only primary for controllers that let you do any damage. fbm.

Thats what I was curious about because I interpreted it in a few ways. I just wanted to bring into the open that, should that be true, and it's a nerf, it relegates Plant to a completely useless secondary, which is something the developers likely do not completely understand and I'd like to bring to the front so that its implications are fully understood. As it stands, Plant brings two very specific things to the table versus the front running TA secondary, and that is that Plant kills things very well. Strangler provides a vastly superior instant-hit ability as compared to SSJ, the other common alternative, and Toxins, which enhances burst spikes. As it stands most TA blasters can kill things in 2 cycles. Plant brings the possibility of doing it in one for specific sets (Psy and Dark specifically), but post-patch, that possibility will be removed. This patch is already removing one of the 5 viable Blaster secondaries (Atomic) from the pool of competitive pvp secondaries for the class, albeit for good reason. This secondary fix to specifically Toxins, risks removing yet another. On the flip side, assuming they buff it, the TTK in PvP could reach a point where 1606 toons, which are for the most part, impossible to run in general pvp outside very specific scenarios, and usually power picks, even harder to run. Making even more power sets capable of lethal OTKs like the Psy 4 piece burst combo. It also runs the risk of removing assault hybrid as the choice among only two real options in PvP Hybrids (Should this change be a nerf), but that's another issue entirely because both of the frontrunners are bugged instances, and the rest are irrelevant.

Also, while we're on the subject of CCs. Can we have a comment on the atrocious state of Controllers in PvP? Doms got a pretty nice playability buff in the last patch, and this patch brings nerfs specifically to one of controllers few remaining strengths (Power boost and -special interactions) With the short nature of CC's in general, combined with complications related to Mez Suppression, Controllers have little to no place in PvP in general outside of niche buff/debuff bots. It would be nice if their Passive, Containment, which provides "Critical" Damage on mez'd targets, could be reviewed and damage added to supplement the fact that it's almost non-operable in the majority, if not all relevant PvP.

Curious to know if what it means by the doublehit/plant changes using a pvp formula. I assume that means it got nerfed, but by how much? As it stands, Plant secondary was already fairly weak among the better secondaries available to blaster. Ranking behind TA, EM, and Martial in terms of general viability. The set had two significant upsides which revolved around exclusive focus on damage. While the set definitely needed to be evaluated, I'm curious to know how a change like this would affect it. Assuming that it loses even 200 damage in the course of a combo, Plants already limited viability is essentially removed.

I don't have a massive chip on my shoulder. Everything I've said so far has been strictly to the subject matter at hand. You cherrypicked and tried to do something intellectually dishonest, borderline outright lying and I called you out for it. That is all that happened here. I zone more then most people, and do so without a pocket emp or team. Why would I be upset about dying? That doesn't even make sense. I very specifically cited you as one of the best players in the game, before describing your performance in zone. I clearly stated my respect for you before saying what actually happened. There is no chip here besides what you've imagined for yourself. Stop overthinking it, I never attacked you. And see there's the rub. If you didn't think less of me, your first response to me clarifying wouldn't have been an assumption that I'm salty. There are exactly three ways to upset me in the game, and being killed in a zone on a toon I IO'd out 30 minutes ago and was testing would definitely not be one of them. You mistake my direct and straight nature for being emotional. You should refrain from reading into others when you have never spoken to them before in any meaningful manner, nor have any relationship with them. It makes you come off badly. Should we call this a misunderstanding, or do you have something else that is bothering you?

All I did was point out what happened and mentioned that it was such a far outlier that it should never be taken seriously or considered in any manner beyond memes. In a fairly respectful manner at that. Your first response to me stating the correct context is to toss a random ad hominem at me. On the other hand, I'm not. I die in zones all the time, I know it better then anyone because I play zones solo almost exclusively, while you basically never do. It would be different if you posted the other logs where you do 200 damage uppercuts, or get completely ignored until your team dies, then you die to the remaining 5-8 people. That's simply how melee is at the moment. Cherrypicking and then trying to claim that it's representative of a whole is dishonest. At best. I don't have anything against you, no emotion involved in this at all, but you were basically worthless on a tank. All you did was die. That isn't your fault, even if you think it is. Melee is just bad. Taunts are annoying, but not worth gimping yourself to doing a quarter of other classes damage. You can get damage, but never enough to be relevant. You can get webs, but never enough to be relevant. Melee has a niche, it's just a weak one that has no place in the current pvp meta. It needs attention and nothing you've shown or done has made any reasonable headway in showing that it isn't true. I know you think less of me because I don't come to KBs or Scrims, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong, nor that I deserve to be attacked randomly for disagreeing with you. You're better then that.

He also neglects to mention the fact that I was held untoggled, fully poison debuffed and talking with a friend. He also neglects to mention that he spent over an hour in RV trying that and I think that was the only kill he got in the entire time frame. Lib, one of the best players in the game, struggled to get any meaningful amount of kills. I think it says a *lot*. Since he mentioned it, and he is one of scarce few people I actually respect in the community, I came here to add a bit of my input. Melee is bad. Bad is a relative term, meaning the worst. Honestly speaking, that's objectively true. Melee suffers from being inherently disadvantaged which naturally brings about a "Brain Drain" aspect. Good players will not generally hamstring themselves by playing a melee class. Thus due to a lack of "Good" players playing melee classes, they look much worse then they actually are. Melee probably needs buffs, changes or to be addressed, but there are a lot of issues. One of which being how incredibly difficult it is to kill a, say, Regen or Bio Tank/Brute/Scrapper. Particularly if they play defensive, slot defensive or build defensive. Let alone all three. Heal Debuffs don't work on them. Regen Debuffs do, but are of limited use in a burst meta like we have. Recharge slow debuffs are hilariously easy to slot into negligence if not complete non-factors. Until they address the durability of Bio, Regen and Melee in general it's very unlikely that Melee will see any major changes in the direction they need (Either straight damage outside fossilize, or a buff to apply more damage). As it stands, most Melee classes are already capable of more damage then they should be capable of considering their current durability. Melee is probably balanced. Melee is also probably bad. The two are not the same thing. Balance involves giving up one thing, for another. If you want more damage, you can't facetank 5 people and laugh it off like you currently can. If you want to facetank 5 people and laugh it off, you can't do damage. As it stands, most tankers can reliably do 800 damage (What Lib does to my controller in normal circumstances. ) or so. As it stands, Scrappers can semi-reliably do the same. Brutes are slightly behind tankers. That's far more then they should be doing considering their current durability.

That makes sense, I thought it felt a lot slower. It completely broke the char->lance or lance->TK timings for PvP. I tried for an hour or so this morning to find something to fill Lance's timing in the Psy attack chain but nothing really does until ~140 units in range.

On a follow up note. Can I ask what changed about Psionic Lance? The power definitely changed. Animation or projectile speed wise. Measurably so. Is that a bug or an unmentioned change for the patch? If it is an unintended change that can't be fixed, would it be possible to tweak the power's projectile speed to compensate for potential animation time increases to preserve Psy Blasts inherent timing/pace? Psy Blasts major strength was how its timings overlapped to land huge "Spikes" of burst damage, which is integral to the sets performance in PvP. It would be very appreciated if that strength could be preserved.

Previously there was definitely cantmove involved, but it was very consistent. You'd have what felt like a quarter second of cantmove, and around a second of animation. Though it being bugged entirely and that's what made it usable seems to be the issue here. Even though the impact it has on blaster snipes has more or less hurt snipes effectiveness in burst combos as the projectiles seem to obey fundamentally different rules then other projectiles, I was curious as to whether or not there were bugs involved with the changes as a whole. Personally a lot of the changes seem to have just brought a lot of problems on my end with next to no upsides, but that is the nature of changes.

Yep, I already noted that above.

Then it's not the problem and there's something entirely different. There was definitely not 1.3 seconds of root time until this patch on the epic Moonbeam using it in the actual game. It's sounding more and more like this was a bug fix as opposed to an intentional nerf and that the snipe never should have been usable if not for its bugged iteration. <If that's so, I can't see it ever being usable. Not the answer I was looking for, but an answer none the less. As a follow up question, why was the change to 1.3 seconds universal necessary? Just for normalization? Curious as to why. It's caused a lot of problems with sets in pvp and it's made me curious.

So 38% of the previous 1.3 second animation was CANTMOVE, but now 100% of the current 1.3 second animation is CANTMOVE. That would be the problem I am describing, and it's quite problematic. Is it fixable, or something that can change, or should I just consign the skill to the ash heap of unusable pvp history?

This doesnt actually address any of the points I raised. I understand that the sequencers were broken and the power was firing too fast. It always felt a bit weird considering how fast snipes worked on other blasters. However the issue is that every power in the game has an animation time, as well as a root time. The two are distinctly different pieces of the puzzle. For instance, Strangler has activation time of 2.07, but you are not rooted completely in place for all 2 seconds of that animation. Similarly that was true for Moonbeam pre-patch. It had an animation but you were not actively rooted in place, on the ground, unable to issue movement commands, for the entire animation. In this games PvP, movement is incredibly important, if not one of the most important aspects of the game. Having a skill like Moonbeam root you for the entire duration of the animation makes it worthless, while before, it was not.

It definitely did not. Several things done to the animations with the latest patch broke a lot of things in PvP. Snipes, as a whole are completely mis/differently timed and the Moonbeam epic snipe is has changed to the point of being completely unusable. To be completely frank, many of the changes to the animations and timings to powers done this patch have had fairly large impacts to the PvP aspect of things, while only mild cosmetic if not no impact on the PvE side of things. Is there a reason the changes were made this way, and is it possible to discuss reverting the most impactful ones (Such as the change to Moonbeam epic), or them in general due to their non-relevance in PvE and their extreme effect on PvP? If the changes were made out of necessity can we get an explanation on what happened exactly? I didn't see the issue being a thing when I first read the patch notes, but the timing and general usability of every character I have with a snipe power has been greatly altered in PvP, to an extreme extent that Moonbeam went from being a good power, to utterly unusable. As in it went from the top of the Patron Pool powers, to the bottom. Even in the more mild cases of its use on Blasters, Snipes simply no longer behave like any other power in the game, as they now have normalized travel time as opposed to the variable travel times of every other projectile in my kit, which more or less hurts any set using travel time snipes for specific burst chains (Psy and Dark Blast are prime examples)

Any reason why Moonbeam was bumped from a .25 second root time to a 1.3 second root time making it feel incredibly funky to use and making it horrible in PvP? Also why is Psy dart using 3 different animations?

It'd also be nice if we shorten the channel time from what seems like 10 seconds to like, 2. Or remove it entirely. It's very nice to be able to go the the base directly instead of tabbing out while I wait for the channel to complete.

To be clear, I'm a PvPer. Mainly a zone one. This is my perspective so that you can understand; During the last patch, there were a multitude of changes to how the epic snipes worked. Including their timing/root duration. I'm curious as to why this was necessary because it made both Moonbeam and Zapp nearly unusable in their current state. Prior to the change, there was a small root animation during the 1.1(?) second activation time for Snipe. Likely less then half a second, perhaps as little as a quarter. Now the root duration of the skill animation is the full 1.3 seconds and it causes severe gameplay impact. Negatively. It went from a passably good skill to use while having access to Shadow Meld, to being effectively unusable. Given I do not believe removing/lessening the root duration for the quick snipe animation(s) would impact PvE in any way, would it be possible to request the change be (Partially) reverted to a point where the root does not make the skill nigh-on useless as a ranged attack for a melee character? Appreciated

You were just saying earlier that you would get 3 slots from this "Change". Meaning you have at least 3 KB Ios slotted, plus, in all likelihood, the free KB IO slot you get in your travel power. So, what are you guys doing that requires 16 mag KB protection in PvE? Maybe I'm missing something. I can tank hami with one KB IO and base buff. I can solo LRSF with 1 KB IO. Like, what PvE are you guys doing that require so much KB prot? Don't get me wrong. I don't care if this change really goes through, but it seems much more likely that you guys are just having a fit because it's a change, however minor, that might do something, or anything. Nothing behind your reasoning seems to make any sense. Seeing as how I have never seen a serious PvE build with *More then one KB IO, I'm wondering how you guys are needing this much prot.

I'm still confused as to why people, like Vanden, need mag 16 KB protection in PvE? One KB IO + base buff is enough to tank Hami on a fire tank and not get KBed. Are you guys doing force-bolt only AE missions? I'm actually curious. All fake-nem AE missions? Even if that all is true, why are you wasting 4-5 slots on KB IOs when you could just spend 45 seconds every 90 minutes getting a +10 mag KB protection buff from base. Is there something I'm unaware of?

No one actually dedicates actual non-free slots to KB in PvE. It is already entirely irrelevant because there are half a dozen pieces of PvE content with KB mag over 4. I specifically outlined the impact that this change would have in PvE. For the vast majority, it would give roughly .2 end/second to people fighting with their travel power on, which would be the difference between having a Micro and a KB IO in your travel power of choice. So yes, in general, in a vacuum, this is a large PvE implication. In actual practice. It makes absolutely no difference.

In part, yes. Let me put it this way, I have never seen a PvE build waste a slot, as in an actual placable slot, on KB IOs. My PvE builds all have one KB IO. I can do all of the PvE content and never get KBed. The mobs that can KB me through the one KB IO I have in SS, can be counted on one hand. If I do a Nem arc, like most people, I just grab a 90 minute base buff for KB prot. The only change that this change would impact on me, and the half a dozen people in my SG that do TF's with me, would be saving me 45 seconds every 90 minutes crafting a KB buff when I do Nemesis content. Huge PvE impact. Not any more then it already has been. For literally over 99% of content, and 99% of the players, the 1 KB IO that you put in the 1 free slot you get in your travel power of choice, has already invalidated KB on players as a mechanic. I've already addressed this.