Kanil

trapdoor testing, same build as above: rules are basically the same shit as pylons: destiny OK, no judgement, assault off, only insp allowed is yellow (for blind because lol night widows/tarantula mistresses). kill everything except the pop-up guns (this skews ranged too much results-wise), start the timer on pre-combat destiny. stop timer when trapdoor goes blue. the reason i always wanted vids is because player skill/positioning and enemy management are factors that come into play for live play and in this mission, and often times discrepancies can be accounted for based on that. beta: 6m42s - initial run, had to get used to new AOE string/remember the feel. 5m12s 5m22s 6m7s (enemy scattering) 6m1s (spent time healing due to -def from t.mistresses) 5m42s (the hell is with all the x:x2 enders?) live: 5m24s 4m48s 4m51s 4m54s 5m18s mission wouldn't reset so ended here but i'm pretty sure i can dip into the lower 4m times on ideal runs - all of the runs on live had a lot of hitches from healing, blind and enemy scattering. for reference, i ran a quick test on my ba/bio scrapper and got a time of 5m44s, which is above average but not 'great' as my fortunata and ice/bio chars tend to get around 5m to sub 5m times as well. immediate impressions are that the QOL changes are really notable, as is the buff to crushing blow (if it's intentional?)) - playing on the test server in terms of 'strings' feels a lot smoother because of the drastically increased recharge times, but the actual attacks themselves are significantly worse by a large margin. so it's weaker, but smoother (as intended). the actual scale of the damage loss is pretty significant as far as i can tell - a large part of it is that crit strikes-> whirling smash as an opener doesn't wipe out most of the crowd so you end up having to chase enemies around more since they'll start scattering due to the lowered radius on whirling smash.

doin' some pyloning right now so excuse the mess 'cuz i'm just gonna chaospost the times i'm getting. one of the big factors of the TW changes is how the optimal strings are changed - rather than having to juggle anything you can basically just do FT-RA-AOD-FT-RA over and over again which is kinda hilarious i guess. but since a lot of TW's damage came from maximizing optimal strings, judging strings 1:1 seems weird, but i figure i'd throw them out there as a reference for a few shots. testing the string i currently do on live yields: 1m48s 1m49s 2m2s 1m49s 1m44s 1m49s testing possible new optimal string based off understanding of old move properties (basically maximimze RA->FT use): (bm-> ft->ra->aod->ft->ra->aod->ft into ra->ft->aod->cb->ft) 1m46s 1m46s 1m42s 1m55s 1m58s testing w/ using alternate string using crushing blow crit (CB->FT->RA->AOD -wait- non-momentum CB) 1m37s 1m41s 1m33s ...maybe not so optimal, haha. i'd imagine a lot of the difference in the build between the one tsuko is using and mine relates to a heavier use of procs on the moves to retain the damage that was originally just done through the set itself - the primary source of damage on the live version is from crit FT/RA, which appears to be heavily lowered. i also noticed that crushing blow appears to have it's non-momentum activation time roughly halved? it's significantly faster than live, because it's messing with my strings quite a bit (due to how fast it is, hilariously). due to that and the way momentum reduces damage at the moment, it seems that the best way to increase damage on my bio scrapper build specifically is to have the non-momentum version of crushing blow crit/proc as much as possible. feels backwards, but what can ya do? comparison to prior pylon times on the same build in the pylon thread proper: as for "non-pylon content" shit, i always run +4/x8 tests using the trapdoor mission from mender ramiel on my builds to get a good feel for their overall power level since it seems like more or less a decent standard - it's got mostly council/arachnos, a simple layout, and an EB who is just beefy enough at the end of the map, gotta carry some yellows due to the blind, but otherwise it feels pretty consistent for a power gauge. i'll run some testin' for that as well, but i never kept record for that since i really wanted to make a thread where folks could showcase their builds doin' general runthroughs of that with vids (as to make sure the standards line up). so far a sliiiightly standard tw/bio build (vs. nihlii's proc-based build) got dumpstered pretty bad in the ST department. it's producing results that are worse than proc'd out broadsword and a standard katana build by a large margin. the nerf to damage in momentum seems to be the biggest culprit, but that's up to folks who pay more attention than me

yeah, that's why i was askin' about that. all the vids in my thread are pre-ban, so they should be in the clear since the rules were like, "after x date no vids please" appreciate the heads up, though!

yeah, the ppm thing is absolutely strange to me because of that specifically... i really wonder where the idea even comes from that ppm needs fixing. practically every single build i've got on here leverages the ppm system to either close the gap between mid and top tier powersets or really abuses it (see the non-proc wm build vs the procced up wm build). it's worrying because it feels like there's a really insane disconnect somewhere in what high end builds are like vs some worry about 'things being logical outliers/not following a standard set of rules'. even without the spectre of TW hanging over tier performances, it actually widens the gap between things like WM and well, uh, everything below WM in terms of performance. i wouldn't be surprised to find in proper testing that in a world where the ppm stuff is heavily nerfed/weakened, WM having a larger gap to whatever the second best set would be (likely still DB by my guess?) than TW does to WM, except WM has no caveat like TW does in how flexible it is in live play. one of the big things about a potential ppm nerf that generally goes overlooked beyond high-spec builders is that scrappers rely on being able to leverage ppm to actually keep pace with stalkers and brutes - without it, they're kind of a dead end. many of the relevant stalker sets already outperform scrappers by quite a large margin in both ST and AOE without really 'sacrificing' anything besides a taunt aura. also, a WM build actually doesn't need to sacrifice any of that stuff for those kinds of results. i wouldn't be surprised if that snipe was actually a total net loss for damage since that was the case in my testing with DB and BS, but it's something i've only incidentally tested. i've actually posted twice in this thread getting better or close to results to your stuff using both a traditional non-proc build without having to rely on any epic power pools at all. honestly, in my live play of the powersets i'd actually pick wm over tw like 90% of the time due to how much tw actually suffers in speedrun/strong teams in comparison to WM generally being able to contribute more overall, but that's a pretty specific niche that i'd imagine most players don't really delve into (and that wouldn't be balanced around anyways). the better output on TW, even if it is a definitive outlier just ends up being like... not substantial unless you are carrying the team yourself - the speed in which stuff gets wrecked is such a huge issue, haha. i actually also find SS to be in a weird spot because of this as well - SS is practically worthless for speed purposes because of the amount of downtime you have (near 20% downtime) actively being detrimental to the team on top of the general +dmg woes that come with the territory but in casual teams that crash is totally negligible. that's just a tangent on something that's bound to get nerfed for being an "overpowered outlier" that just don't really tack with my experience as well, though. anyways, here's both of the post in case if you're lookin for vid evidence. i'm not actually sure if i have the builds on hand anymore, but they're not really that wild.

wait, are vids ok to post now? just checking to make sure you don't get jacked for that. 'cuz if they are, i'd totally post my own performances to showcase my stuff, even if the char's still at t3s

really hate not having vid evidence of this, but yeah. been sitting on a tw/bio scrapper for awhile but i didn't really like them because i couldn't adapt my tw/bio brute's string over so it always felt awkward playing them vs st stuff on top of all the issues tw has when teams are really movin'. finally bothered to work out some st strings - if things go south it starts being not very fixed and very flexible and just based on tw playtime knowledge in maximizing output and ATO use. wanted to get some stuff in before tw gets nerfed as a direct comparison point, because i think that tw will likely be nerfed to be worse than WM out of memery and the vibe i get from what the devs think about melee powersets. T3 total core muscle, T3 total core degen, T3 total radial, T4 ageless core (if this ever dips past the 1m30s mark your end bottoms out asap, so these are not sustainable in long term without usage of something like recovery serum) times: note my timing method is insanely flawed and is actually just based on the destiny timer. i just count whenever i hit it. the string concept goes as such: build momentum starter: follow through->rend armor->arc of destruction->follow through->crushing blow->rend armor->follow through which goes into the general non-momentum string: crushing blow->follow through->rend armor->arc of destruction->follow through whenever build momentum is up and follow through is up, you do the following string: FT->RA->CB->FT->AOD->RA->FT if build momentum is up, and FT and AOD are both up then you do the starter string. recover with titan sweep on non-momentum string, substituting CB starter for TS. this is more or less pylon/av/eb exclusive and not for general purpose but that's usually the nature of this stuff anyways, right? you can notice a pattern that most strings are failed, because the nature of the build requires that FF +rech goes off on AOD to actually complete it on the initial string. a lot of deviation/recovery seems to lie in how much the set really wants FF to go off to increase the amount of times BM can be done. if you delay doing CB a bit so FT has some time to recharge on the initial BM string if FF doesn't go off, you can consistently get better results as far as i can tell. on top of this, there is theoretically a better string for BM where if AOD is up and FT is ABOUT to be up and will be up within the span of the BM anim (so, FT->BM->FT->AOD->RA->FT, etc.) but a dropship zapped me while testing it and i decided to make breakfast instead. ato is on AoD, which is 3 slot arma, 1 slot ff, 1 slot glad -res, 1 slot ato crit strikes. build: note that i've know someone who was sayin' he consistently was getting sub-50s times on tw/bio scrappers with t4s but it's from a long time ago. they're trustworthy enough to me so i figure there's a broader world out there. tw having so many things coming together is what makes it interesting from a mechanical level, with the obscene output making it satisfying instead of the 'what the fuck was the point of all that when i can just hit 3 attacks as WM/kat' feel that other mechanic-heavy sets like psi melee have

is it truly TW unless you're nearly worthless in any speedy TFs/steamroll missions and an unstoppable death machine everywhere else though

honestly the most likely obvious change if its a buffnerf is that dmg overall is going down but momentum will provide a huge recharge buff lol

lmao what the hell did i miss here i skimmed the las tpage and some dude is goin on about cancel culture or something anyways back to the grind of shouting into the void: fire blast is an outlier in the same way as tw in the parts where it matters most and negatively affects power choice variety more than tw because the incentive to pick fire blast in it's competition vs. the incentive to pick tw due to the momentum mechanic actively making tw unappealing to many players, especially during the character journey while levelling up both are perfectly fine and they should be focusing on making battle axe stronger than war mace because i don't want to play with mace's ugly ass models

the solution to chars being too strong? make every enemy group also spawn with a full set of x8+4 rularuu bosses next to them. let's see how you like psi damage, phasing and autohitting -def suckerssssssss for good measure, every other spawn will also have lvl50+ praetorian resistance there also dealing -def and -res. you know, for flavor.

and yet this is considered perfectly acceptable when rage is involved barring proc heavy builds thats right lets open the can of rotten worms its time for the ragewar

claws is OP, make full auto a toggle is my argument

funny enough about the galaxy brain testin' that i found out about this thread, he actually has a blaster and mastermind (?) variant of that. thankfully, because i'm definitely too lazy to test that kinda stuff, haha. don't get me wrong, the aspects of 'hey, what is the value for standardized SO builds' when you actually have to take into account survivability totally matter for that point vs. high end 'only damage ONLY DAMAGE' world. the discussion around the results it provided earlier in the thread were pretty interestin' as well, because of how much value changes on blaster stuff when in the realm of SO builds vs. IO builds. archery and energy blast go way up the list under those circumstances. that paradigm between melee sets uniqueness vs. blast sets being more standardized is actually what i'm gunning at in terms of "what is the balance sense here" more than "defending TW or nerfing fire blast" - fire blast sticks out like a nail in the same vein as TW in the context that matters the most for the game of Big Damage (see: best times in galaxy brain's thread, where the gap demonstrably gets even wider when you consider high end builds) since that aspect would also apply given any situation where the blaster has any amount of survival support if they aren't built up. my actual 'argument' is "why waste time nerfing TW when fire blast exists and does the same thing when you could be buffing AR and FM/whatever powersets i play" which is equally as worthless in the context of all of this stuff already happening anyways but it's fun to prod and see why folks don't believe in that disconnect beyond the most obvious reasons. like, stating that blast sets are largely homogeneous and then going "but it's okay that there is no reason to pick anything but fire blast from the high-end aspect because ???" is just strange to me - why not just admit that it's an outlier and that's okay? that other stuff should be brought up to have cool specialties over that? what makes TW 'the' outlier over fire blast under those circumstances when the direct comparison is even more weighted on such similar sets. we're just back at the point where our last reply was, haha. i asked for the numbers in terms of it being 'not having a wider gap' and what you considered as the criteria for those sets being directly under the equivalents. so it's just back 'there's no secondary effect' w/ the broad statements, which is like, sure, boats passing in the night. i know you said that other dude doesn't want 'em, but i love seein' those hard numbers. you also never actually addressed the distinction between flares vs. momentum and how you think using flares is equivalent to the entire momentum mechanic in how it affects live play and performance but that might just be another one of those 'boats in the night' things. "hey, there are secondary effects that mean you scrap the safest and strongest given [x] conditions" isn't a particularly compelling to me as an argument of when the immediate opposing thought to me is "8 fire blast characters is The Best Team at high end with practically no margin otherwise" - the aspect of sets being distinct and cool is lost when 'im throw fire and kill everything' ends up being the default and absolute tippity top, y'know? if ice blast/other sets actually did more or even equivalent ST damage than fire outside of build/AT conditional factors (i.e. scourge + procs) that's a step forward! if it were factors related to the powerset, like "fire does the most damage, sure, but the secondary effects or conditional things can create cool situations where this powerset is explicitly better" outside of "everyone has SOs and there's no support chars" like, i love that my AR char has full auto as part of their ranged attack string. i think that's cool as hell, having a 120m range nuke that i can fire off. it's unique and applicable in weirdo outdoor map situations where it can be fun to just nuke folks in near draw-distance range. but beyond flavor, why in the world would i pick that over fire blast? what's the point of working on stuff to nerf that type of thing for TW? re: player powerset choice and legacy/theme, that's literally the first thing i posted as a disclaimer in how much i hate using those data points? it's one of those things where the thematic purpose and legacy aspect can be what accounts for it. i don't fault ya for missing that cuz you had to wade through hellpost world including my own, but yeah i don't discount it at all. but in general the concept/metric of why something is nerfed is because 'it's affecting the playerbase/powerset deisgn negatively', right? measuring that is pretty rough in it's own right so i'm just goin' with what's there in terms of available data.

the gap being larger is the whole point - the gap is as wide of a margin as TW, with TW's caveat being that it has those additional benefits at the expense of a mechanic that actively makes it unfun for tons of folks to play and detrimental to high-end teams due to the speed/anim-time/rooting related aspect of it vs. pace those teams steamroll through stuff. fire blast's caveat is "it doesn't do secondary effects" and little else, which is fine with it being the damagelord. the amount that you value having KB/-slow/-end/-def or whatever mediocre secondary effect of other powersets is clearly not the standard case with the playerbase, because of the player numbers shown above. once again, i reference however much of this thread is dedicated to how all high-end content devolves into "nothing matters but damage given sufficient IOs/incarnate powers and buffs" or whatever the hell that discussion is about. i'm not sure how to reply to someone who believes that energy blast or peacebringer blasts are near comparable to the output that fire provides. applying that to the melee side of powersets would be like stating that battle axe having knockdown on everything has near-equal value to katana's overall all-rounder strength or something. it's strange. fire blast doesn't have a mechanic that has that kind of 'fun penalty' - there is no "oh you gotta wait until you get a full attack string for it to be fun" with fire. you come out the door guns blazing and stay superhot. you didn't address my actual point, still. fire blast's outlier aspects clearly affect player power choice more than TW. why is it that TW is nerfed and fire blast is seen as "ok"? for what it's worth, i still want fire melee buffs because i think it should have the highest damage in the same vein fire blast does. i just want to use GFS in strings and use it as an crit strikes proc attack - one of the things that is often missed in scrapper damage comparison stuff is how the ATO and attack chains interact since high-end output for them is so reliant on the ATO, and sadly fire melee is one of the sets who only has mediocre options anim/rech/DPA-wise for that and suffers greatly for that when it comes to sustained ST damage.

you mean the powerset that is still in the top 5 overall for damage and isn't top 3 because it doesn't have a source of -res proccing unlike fire blast's inferno or all the sets above it? spoilers: fire melee in high +dmg and high -res situations does significantly more damage than everything but TW and WM, and that's with it having a completely worthless T9 and an inability to leverage really good proc builds focusing on offense. not a single person has generated any evidence contrary to my point - fire blast is the best at the thing that matters for most ats that you can pick it on and is far and away the best at it at nearly (or more than?) the same outlier as TW vs. WM (the 2nd best melee powerset), down to the thing where the 2nd place powerset (arguably ice) has the exact same issue of being 'close' in ST and getting clobbered in AOE. it's an outlier in the same vein, so why is it that TW is the only one that's affected? "because it only has damage?" how transparent is that statement when i'm sure a huge amount of pages of this discussion i've barely read is about how "incarnates are too powerful and kill things too fast"? like, really? everyone wants to engage on the "actually fire blast is fair" side of the argument, or brainlessly meme about "tw is overpowered because it does kb, -res, kd, whoaohoh, insert slide whistle noise here" without context of how the sets actively are affecting powerset choice in player population or how they work in live play. who gives a shit which powerset is objectively better? fire blast better do more damage than TW on blasters, that's the point the pearl clutching of "oh no, don't nerf fire blast!" is eye-rolling because it hasn't been the point of my statements to begin with - the point is that "if TW is such an outlier that it has to be nerfed due to perception and how it affects player population powerset picks, why is fire blast, which is demonstrably worse in affecting that seen as OK?" what is the purpose of going after TW for that reason and not fire blast? why is it that people go "actually, blaster sets need help but TW needs to be nerfed?" what is the logical chain on that beyond the most surface-level observations of powersets? once again, for the millionth fucking time i hate using these charts because there's so many factors that come into power choice (see: empathy bein #1 defender set and regen being popular as the easy examples of legacy knowledge affecting that or SS being the superhero powerset) but are everyone is seriously trying to argue that fire blast being more popular than both powersets under it combined on the ATs that aren't defender (sonic blast support world) or sentinel (their version of FB is a joke) isn't some kind of anomaly? that it's less of an anomaly than TW?

can someone sum up what the other majority of the last 3 pages were about because i aint reading all of that, i just want folks to prove me wrong about how fire blast isn't the same type of outlier as tw (and demonstrably more negative for powerset picking re: obsoleting other powersets to the point of where it drastically affects player population picks) with actual facts and logic instead of memery and pearl-clutching

it feels strange to me that throwing in a flares is seen as equally sustainable as TW sacrificing momentum build from group-to-group or drastically slowing down in ST rotations on whiffs and momentum builder attacks but i get the angle you're coming at in that scenario of a raw ST damage lighting up a stationary AV thing where TW 'gains' so much from its mechanic activating like that vs. 'losing out' because you sometimes have to use flares. it just doesn't feel like a good overall comparison to me in terms of efficacy of powersets and how much momentum affects the play-to-play situation of TW and how little fire blast sacrifices in 'exchange' that's def going into the 'what's better, fire blast or tw' argument which is just kind of a side discussion to my main point still: what is the outlier in TW vs. the outlier in FB? how are those measured? why is it the TW is seen as 'an extreme outlier that is negatively affecting players and power choices' when fire blast exists and does the very thing that TW is purportedly being nerfed over? i actually hate the 'playerbase powerset picked graph' for just using as concrete proof but like, what's the proof otherwise? people pick fire blast more than the next two popular powersets combined in every single powerset where it's available besides the obvious exception of defender sonic blast

but i don't want to be a god, i want to be a squid /

it's the pretty well known chain for fire blast and is pretty easy to obtain on top of that. sometimes you throw in a flares as filler but that's about it. from group to group you're basically running BU/Aim (together or alternating, whichever floats your boat since both are valid) into inferno opener and blaze->snipe->fb to kill stragglers. i keep bringing up speedruns because it's the most extreme example of where TW and fire blast differ in terms of showcasing the difference in live play between the two sets, where the nature of TW/momentum actively hampers it vs. fire blast just running in and exploding all over the place. that all blast sets have crashless nukes and can party train is definitely it's own can of worms that i've seen folks go back and forth on, but consider that as something that fire blast distinctly has in common with other blast sets (as the best? or close overall nuke) vs. something like TW needing momentum to start whirling blow/AoDing folks i'd like to see what your opinions are for what the second place blast set and melee sets are and how wide of a gap that outlier is because i'm sure i have a skewed view of what those are due to testing high-end scrapper/bio armor builds vs. an overall broad perspective on melee sets on diff ats. i know people point towards the excel sheets or galaxy brain's testing as if they're some kind of holy grail for that but there's an element of live play and building that's lost there that you can see. ofc, the nature of fire blast/tw comparison in the sense of "SO build vs. IO/high-end build in comparison to other sets" is totally a realistic aspect of the discussion as well, but that the discussion can even be had feels more like an indicator of what i'm saying bein' valid than not.

thanks for the rundown on the numbers, been curious about the direct comparison beyond just my own personal observations. the nature of TW's string vs fire blast's string/anim times and the raw numbers that come up i think highlight more point more than they refute it in this case - beaten while writing this post, but yeah. that. once again, i'm not arguing for that the tw nerfs are unneeded or that fire blast should be nerfed, i'm just pointing out how the logic doesn't track at all to me beyond the most surface level observation or memetic statements (tw has -res, knockdown AND big damage whoaohohohoh) fire blast is overall a better damage set than tw and that's a good thing due to the nature of how those ATs and sets differ. the commonly repeated statement of 'tw is the only outlier to the point of where it obsoletes other powersets' makes no sense to me when fire blast is "near" momentum up TW while most other blast sets as a whole wish they could be even 80% of the way there.

yeah its real cool being called human garbage by someone who isnt willing to address any actual points of discussion beyond "actually its op"

im "debating" that fire blast and tw are the same type of outlier but tw being an outlier is a meme while fire blast being an outlier is "definitely fake because all it has is damage" regardless of how all numbers show how fire blast adversely affects power choices despite the former being the one getting dinged for that exact reason still haven't seen anyone even attempt to prove me wrong, they just keep saying the equiv of "b-but assault rifle has -def!!" like that's a real point instead of fire blast basically being momentum-on TW DPA-wise permanently isn't the outlier aspect also while im editing, i demand full auto be a toggle

one thing that's funny about the incarnate content thing is that the actual incarnate arc stuff has enemies that are weaker than their outside-of-incarnate content because of the level shifting thing making it so they can't actually be +3/+4 over you ever barring the itrial stuff the number of dangerous enemy groups would probably wildly increase if they were able to genuinely be +4 to you or even +1 to you in the context of regular play and not crazytown bananapants high end build play when factoring in incarnate things edit: and yet not a single actual point was addressed, just 'you're a crazy stupid person, bye' get at me with your facts and logic, i'll take on all challengers

yeah, you know what fire blast doesn't have as well? momentum also that spreadsheet you posted is only scrapper sets? where's the better comparable fire damage? that must the reason why speedruns at +4 are done with all tw scrappers and not all fire/fire blasters, after all the boat of 'actually elec blast is more valuable than fire blast if you take away fire's damage' is such a narrow point of view that it misses what makes fire obscene in the first place to the point of where it's clearly observable that other blast sets are not picked and have little value in being picked over it in the majority of situations from a larger playerbase perspective and a high-end play perspective my argument isn't that 'fire blast should be nerfed', it's that the logic of nerfing tw doesn't track when you apply it to any applicable other set from the same criteria, esp from the 'its making the game more unfun for other people because it's a wild outlier' when nearly 3x the playerbase picks fire while TW isn't even the number one spot on it's end TW has the drawback of momentum that prevents folks from playing it because it's unfun to them. what drawback does fire blast have? 'woe is me, i don't do -slow on enemies'? that's the argument? really?