ScarySai

I wish unfounded 'concerns' would be backed by actual playtesting, rather than baseless assumptions. That's why we have these threads, not for forum pvp.

Yeah, this pretty much only impacts the mid 20s in a substantial way. I'm all for it, worst bracket, honestly.

Bugfix in today's patch seems to have remedied my main problem with the burn patch, so that with the recharge reversion seems to be working fine as far as having one singular burn patch is concerned. Particularly on brutes, not having fury apply is actually really bad, so glad to see that was unintended behavior, for all archetypes.

Even if you had more collective vet levels than me, you'd still be wrong, but good to know. Let's focus on the facts, yes? One more reply and we can let it be. The problem here is you are overblowing the value of the -regen, while intentionally ignoring the massive, and I do mean massive dps gain the bots have received, particularly in single target, as their aoe was always kinda cracked. See, you can't disregard the damage gain, because it's actually very significant here. -regen at the end of the day, is in fact, effective dps. -regen doesn't actually do anything by itself, unless you are doing damage, you see. Adding dps does in fact, make up for the loss of -regen and has the benefit of being better on things that aren't just big sacks of hit points. Once again, this only comes into play against AVs and gms. You didn't test it if you actually think that. The maintenance drone is actually kinda lowkey insane, by the way. Your drones and assbot no longer get animation locked by the flamethrower/laser aoes, firing it off quickly and continuing to blast. This is also why they are having a bit more end problems than before, by the way. They also gained a decent chunk of new, very potent abilities. Your assault bot and protectors get a heavier hitting plasma blast, the drones get photon grenades, bunch of stuff like that. For those that want an actual data point to work off of, here ya go.

You're speaking to someone that makes builds that chew and spit out 4x8 on the regular, and I'm going to reiterate: the -regen is doing precisely nothing for you, even on EBs - unless you fancy soloing EBs using only brawl and having your pets on passive. Where the -regen shines is STRICTLY on avs and GMs. Photon grenade is decent with procs, but if the complaint is that the -regen doesn't do enough to make these powers desirable without procs, I would agree. However, it does give them a purpose outside of theming at the end of the day, if you're truly that desperate for -regen, anyway. It's not a crutch though, because as previously stated, you don't need them, especially now that the bots do actual dps. You'll find I don't really care for most of the personal attack changes in this patch, except necro which does it in a kinda cool way. Let's think about all the most common bot combos here for a second. Cold, dark, storm and traps. Out of all those options, only storm loses -regen, effectively. Cold is cold, dark has howling twilight, traps has OVERKILL -regen via poison trap, and storm has a metric shitload of damage, soft control, and -res, which scales significantly better with bots doing better base damage now. I even humored the argument with a pylon test earlier in this thread, intentionally not using poison trap and photon, I was still breaking the usual two minute times you'll find on the pylon thread right now, with deaths. Pylons are a situation where the -regen would actually swing things. If you have another test of your own design in mind, I'll happily perform and record it for comparison. As it stands, nobody is losing build options here, they are just getting a better set.

Not -everything-, burn patches are fun for melting crowds. But otherwise, yes. Bots objectively had the worst dps, now they are in a pretty good spot.

Thought I'd offer some clarity. 1: the -regen on the assault bot blasts (reportedly) only triggered the -regen 30% of the time. 2: that -regen only matters on avs and gms. It's not doing anything for you in most content.

I don't think they touched tooltips much, as the change is broad in nature. It might help to compile a list of powers that (now incorrectly) list their own level requirements.

Yup. It can also body block you, for now. Traps was already the best pairing, imo. This just kinda solidifies it. Though, cold and storm are definitely unholy beasts as well. Wai I believe. Pets don't actually follow you into zones, they basically just get resummoned as you enter. It likely doesn't have this feature, and really doesn't need it due to its expendable, fast recharging nature. You'll still want to convert for assbot. Couldn't make it totally free, I guess (sadly). As for the -regen thing, I believe I dispelled the idea that losing that is a nerf on the first page. Those who are willing to provide data to counter that can debunk that if they get tired of theorycrafting.

I'm still not seeing how it's "power creep" for everyone to get decent powers a tiny bit earlier. I can name a good chunk of powersets that essentially god stomp the game from pretty early on. This only makes the early 20s more fun for the majority of ATs. Are we still humoring this fantasy that all sets are created equally? Good changes.

Both, once you ding 24 and respec.

I'm one of them. Your point? It really isn't. Getting the same powers earlier doesn't break the game the way you would have me believe it does. The late 20 mobs and mid 30s aren't tuned that differently. Unless you're about to tell me that +0 skyraiders aren't a joke to just roll over on most archetypes with passable aoe. The concerns of power creep are unfounded, as if the people talking about it forgot what game they were playing.

The power creep comments are strange to me, we must not be playing the same game. Exemping will be much less awful for a few archetypes, many powersets will feel generally better to play at a lower level, and the endgame remains mostly unchanged, with the option to skip your garbage t1 secondary. Seems like a win to me. We can pretend this breaks lower content if we pretend that purpled builds don't exist, I suppose.

It should impact lower geared out players less, if anything. The main thing that got hurt real bad was brutes if you were used to it, again, since every other version of burn was bugged.

Windows + shift + arrow does it for us PC folk. Pretty sure macs can do it, for what it's worth, I just don't know the quantum physics they make you do for it.

Speaking as a shade: change this to 14 or something, the mid-20s are extremely crowded now with all our must-take powers, and it was always weird to me how our version of fold space unlocks ten more levels before the pool version. It's also weird to me that these are the only two powers in the entire level rework that have their requirements go up.

It essentially only matters on avs/gms. But, ya know, most of the good mm secondaries have -regen, or a way of improving pet damage further. If you don't have any -regen at all, daggers exist, and your odds of joining a full team without any -regen at all are pretty low. Worth noting that the bot attacks are generally more worth taking than most, particularly photon grenade since you can get some decent CC with that. I'm toying around with the idea of taking pulse blast to fish for FFB procs.

It's reflective, yes. I only have the photon grenade on that character, but opted not to use it for the first two tests to measure raw dps output. I believe the zero -regen run still beats most bot times, as I did a quick check and couldn't find anything below two minutes. Keeping in mind that other sets with more upfront -res would do better than traps waiting for it's triple acid stack and not using poison, seems pretty good.

Illusion's going to be my main dom, did not miss the PA taunt as much as I thought I would. I would like to have spectral wall's FX on gleam or flash as an alt anim, or something. It's very pretty, but I am never taking spectral wall, there is pretty much no reason to. Honestly, it might as well be spectral wounds if it doesn't become an AoE. My main dillemma will simply be choosing the best secondary for this thing.

Following up on my last post, I ran a few pylons on beta, but can't do any on live since my MM was dissected and undergoing rebuild. Intentionally not using photon or poison trap to simulate a no -regen situation - 2:05 pylon time starting at first trap down. Second pylon with no -regen used - 1:52, while losing two bots in the opener. Third pylon: Not intentionally handicapping myself and using photon/poison trap and all that - 1:27 Keeping in mind that acid mortar takes a good chunk of time to build up, and most other sets will have much stronger opener -res, it's looking good.

My assumption is it'll still be a gain, but I'm lazy, so I'm gonna see if someone else does the live/beta comparison so I don't have to.

Dial back the burn nerfs and my major complaint with the patch vanishes. Simply put, ya overdid it. For brutes it's a MASSIVE nerf, the burn patch itself might as well do zero damage like it did for the other ATs, now. The player should be rewarded for keeping things in the patch. Buff the patch damage to be not cosmetic, and the core issue of mine goes away. For the other ATS, the loss of the x5 burn patches doesn't actually hurt them that much, since it was bugged to begin with, outside of procs one can even argue it to be a buff due to the activation/range thing, however, proccing it is still going to be the play, as the power itself just isn't mega impressive outside of how it used to be on brutes. Tl;dr Bump patch damage up a bit, and remove that ridiculous CD increase. Edit for clarity: This post was made when burn was bugged to not inherit damage buffs. Naturally, this was hitting brutes, who rely on fury, particularly hard. I love five-patch burn too, but I doubt they'll budge on that. Burn seems "fine" for now, as it stands.

Traps has overkill -regen, and bots actually do real ST dps now. Makes sense to me. 😄

It really doesn't, and the dps difference kinda makes up for that regardless. For sets like dark/traps and cold, you don't even lose anything in practice and it's even more of a straight buff. That -regen only comes into play against AVs or GMs, so in 90% of all content, the bots are going to be way more useful to the team. In any case where a teammate has -regen and you're playing a bot secondary without it, you're doing much more for the team post-rework. In any situation where your assault bot would be the only reliable source of -regen, you're breaking even due to sheer damage gain. I haven't been this excited to dust off my bot MM in a long time. For those with doubts, I will happily shadowplay any scenario you want me to throw the set at, to compare performance to the live version. The loss of -regen on the assbot itself is nothing.