MechaMarshmallow
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Posts posted by MechaMarshmallow
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I have an AR blaster too, and I fully agree that Ignite could use a buff. However, I simply don't see the logic in replacing an aoe power with a single target one that has lower dpa. I fully agree with everyone who says that Ignite is currently bad, but AR is already way too vanilla feeling for another simple single target blast to feel good at T8. At the very least replace it with something fun.
For example: What if in addition to the base damage, Incinerator made the target become the centre of a damage aura that would harm surrounding enemies for 50% of the damage dealt to the main target over the duration of the DoT. That'd be more fun than a single target blast, it retains AoE functionality, and would still be usable in a ST attack chain for people who want it for that purpose. Also setting a guy on fire so he burns everyone around him is a neat and easily understood mechanic.
I'd be upset to see Ignite go, but not incensed. What I really hope we can avoid is making its replacement dull and uninspired.
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I'm saddened by the removal of ignite. I don't think anyone really likes Ignite as it is now, but being able to place a persistent fire patch was fun - not to mention that it was aoe and with an immobilization effect you could reliably get the full 139dpa value. In that context, Incinerator feels like a direct downgrade - a nerf in exchange for a quality of life improvement.
Instead of changing this unique power to another mediocre single target blast in a set full of mediocre single target blasts, couldn't Ignite just be changed to say, spawn the fire under the selected target (to remove the target location clunkiness) and have the mob fear effect removed so you don't need to immobilize? Maybe the damage numbers would need to be tweaked if that makes it too strong, but c'mon. This is Assault Rifle. Even with these buffs it's not holding a candle to fire or ice blast.
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On 3/29/2023 at 9:02 AM, MoonSheep said:
at the same time however, the stronger buffs/debuffs from a defender will benefit all 8 members of the team, whereas the corrupters slight damage advantage benefits just 1 player
This is why it's often powerset dependent. Because yes, defenders can leverage larger numbers to output bigger (de)buffs, bit sometimes a larger number is not actually very useful. For example, Kinetics is the classic Corruptor set not just because it enhances your own damage to a higher cap, but also because damage is capped in the first place. Once you hit that cap, you can't go higher. If a Corruptor can bring you to that cap, there is literally no benefit gained from going defender. A few other mechanics follow this pattern, either in a clear sense of it capping (more defense buffing/accuracy debuffing is useless once the enemy only has a 5% chance of hitting you) or for more difficult to clearly math out reasons (At a certain point, more endurance recovery is pointless because no one is running out).
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I, as I'm sure a lot of players do, run combat jumping on most of my characters as a cheap source of defense and immobilization protection. However, it is really frustrating that it's constantly toggled off when I activate ninja run or a number of other similar jump-affecting powers.
I'm not sure whether this was implemented due to technical limitations or as a specific decision. If the former, that's too bad. But it's very irritating to have to toggle CJ back on every time I'm done using ninja run, super jump or similar powers. I can't really see any gameplay reason that allowing it to be stacked would cause a problem.
It's just a small thing, but it feels like a simple QoL improvement that a lot of players would enjoy if possible!
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I'm about to go to bed so I can't test this right now, but I want to call attention to Rending Flurry in Savage Melee real quick.
Currently Rending Flurry has an 8 ft radius and a 15 ft radius when empowered by blood frenzy. These changes would make that a 16 ft radius and 15 ft when empowered.
I don't know of a convenient way to see the details of the blood frenzy version of the power in-game, but please remember to change the blood frenzy version to 10 ft like foot stomp or something, so it's doubled and doesn't end up smaller than the basic version!
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Just now, Vanden said:
Now, personally, I like the T1/T2 swaps (except for the sets where it puts the weaker attack first, like Katana).
I'm confused by this - Katana's current T2, gambler's cut, is stronger than the T1 - and recharges faster to boot.
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I like these changes, by and large. I especially like the T1/2 swap - being forced to take powers that were often invalidated completely by the 30s and better replaced by the second power in the set was always a bad feeling.
I'll have to play around with the AoE changes to really get a feel for how I like them.
Buffing tanker damage seems fine, but bringing them closer to brutes rather than doing something different with them feels like a missed opportunity. I do appreciate that a lot of players of CoX see damage output as the highest priority on teams after player skill because it allows for faster completion of content, so I understand that improving tanker damage may be an obligatory part of bringing them more in line with other bulky ATs for a lot of players.
My own playing around with ideas of how to buff tanks led me to the thought of their bruising being replaced with a proc that would radiate buffs and supportive effects to teammates as the tanker attacked, inspiring them to fight harder as they lead the charge into battle in a passive thematic with characters like Superman who the tanker is designed after. It could effectively increase team damage without putting the tanker themselves into a more damaging brute-like role.
I'd love to see tankers be buffed in a less brute-like direction, but failing that I think these proposed changes are also compelling.
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2 minutes ago, Keleko said:
Katana at least may be a poor choice for swapping T1 and T2 attacks. Current T1 Katana is higher damage than the T2.
The damage per animation time is slightly higher on the T2, and the T2 recharges faster as well, so I believe the T2 would be the preferable option for tankers to be obliged to take.
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Just now, Selenne said:
- Base 2.28 scale damage in their "quick" form, down from 2.76 scale.
I would say that is a nerf
You now get quick form all the time, and if you are at the old +tohit requirement you will do the old 2.76 scale damage. It just lets you use weaker quicksnipes at lower levels of +tohit.
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I don't have hard numbers but I also wouldn't be surprised or alarmed. Summer is out in full force and the game has been back for a couple of months now. It's only natural that players who were chomping at the bit to get back in after 7+ years would be feeling a little less like they needed to be perpetually playing after the game had been available again long enough to get their fill. I doubt we're losing as many players as people are just logging on at a more reasonable and normal schedule for their gaming.
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When using the 'bright hand cast' animation for the power 'Scream' in sonic attack, the power effect emanates from the left hand, but the cast animation uses both hands in a manner that suggests the power should be emanating from a more central position between the hands.
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I've not had the chance to play with all the different snipes on the test server as well as the live server yet, but I do think that it feels a lot cooler and more powerful for quick snipes to come out quickly and then have a longer 'recoil' than to have a moderate pre-load and then moderate recoil afterwards. It's more punchy and feels more like you're using a snipe in combat, which is why you have to spend the rest of the animation recovering.
Naturally the exact point at which the blast comes out will need to depend on the animation in the particular set in question, but I do think erring on the side of having it come out early is a more powerful feeling animation without actually impacting gameplay.
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"LeandroToday at 6:07 PM
Back to 12 second recharge and 14.352 end cost.
I actually have to say I am not a fan of reducing the recharge back to 12 seconds. The 15-second recharge meant there was more room for more complex Blaster attack rotations; with a 12-second recharge, many sets can skip their second attack power once they are fully slotted (for example: Flares, Blaze, Flares, Blazing Bolt; repeat).
If a 15-second recharge feels too weak, I would recommend instead increasing the power of the second (moderate) attack in each Blaster powerset, or otherwise encouraging its use.
Telephone
Broadly speaking, I don't think that making blasters pick and enhance another power to have a full single target attack chain would be anything but detrimental to their effectiveness.
When compared to melee sets, blast sets tend to come with active and complex pairings. Corrupters and Defenders tend to take a lot of powers and need to be on the ball with their support sets, while blasters often dart in and out of melee range with their manipulation powers. Combined with their squishiness and vulnerability to being mezzed, the general playstyle of a ranged character tends to have a lot more plates to keep spinning than melee sets, which may have more complex attack rotations and positioning requirements but a lot less to focus on beyond that. As such, I don't think bringing the complexity of ranged rotations into parity with that of melee ones would be the right choice taken in context of how the different ATs play as a complete package.
Sentinels obviously create a bit of a wrinkle in this distinction, but I'm not very knowledgeable about that AT.
Edit: I wrote this while running a TF so I got a little distracted by the relative complexity issue. I think that's a much smaller problem than the potential for how requiring another power pick would thin out ranged damage dealers enhancement slots to get back to the same level of damage they had before needing the additional power in the rotation. I don't know exactly how much of an impact this would be, but it would definitely be a nerf if an additional power did end up being needed to fill out the rotation.
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Echoing other suggestions here: have ToHit increase your snipes damage, capping at +22% where it'll make all your snipes do 100% of their charged damage. Stacking it is less of a damage boost than it was before, but it's still a boost. Additionally, people that built for it don't feel ripped off. If you can't make it scale, make it all-or-nothing; no boost at 21%, full charged damage at 22%. There has to be some kind of interaction there.
I actually really like this suggestion. It would be a buff, but blast sets already needed help with their single target DPS. Having the tohit buff give a (hopefully) scaling increase that caps out at 22% will keep tohit as a relevant stat, and the cap being 22% means that people already built to quicksnipe won't need to change their build at all to take maximum advantage of it. Snipe damage scaling off of tohit is also a lot more intuitive thematically than tohit suddenly speeding up the animation time to one second.
I say 'hopefully' scaling because it will make 22% tohit feel far less obligatory than it currently does. Quick snipes turning on like a switch at the magic number 22% has never sat well with me, as it feels very arbitrary, and I'd be very excited to see people able to build to, say, +19% to hit and get about 90% of the benefit if that's the most convenient number for them.
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Having looked at the numbers a little more thoroughly, I think this change would be fine even if the recharge was left untouched at 12s instead of 15s. Right now, even with perma-fast snipe, blasters barely edge out scrappers in single target damage on average. Add to that scrappers benefiting from armour sets and mez protection, and in most fights I suspect scrappers have higher damage uptime than blasters.
Blaster secondaries might affect this, but most buffs end up going on melee party members anyway since they tend to be bunched up around enemies, so it probably evens out.
The more I think about the numbers, the more I suspect that a longer cooldown isn't necessary even with this change. Blasters were always supposed to be the glass cannon AT, so giving them a little more 'cannon' to make up for how much more durable their scrapper & stalker counterparts are doesn't seem too far-fetched.
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3. MAKE all in combat snipes fire instantly. (Unless test has lag issues...it seems to take 2 seconds to activate? On live it 'feel's instant.)
Could you tell us what blast set you are using? I just got on the test server and with fire blast, instant blazing bolt fires for me precisely as quickly as it does on live. If animation times actually are slower, that's an issue, but I'm not seeing it myself.
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As a few other people have pointed out, this will probably make to-hit a less valuable stat again. But I think that's better than having to-hit being only artificially useful because a much needed blaster buff is locked behind it.
Glad to see the range back up again. I didn't log in yesterday because my opinions on the changes come from more of a game design philosophy standpoint than a game feel standpoint, but that definitely seemed like the most common point of contention from watching the forums and discord.
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Much like how a Fire/Kin Corruptor has to pay more to soft-cap defense than a Fire/Time or Fire/Traps Corruptor? Or perhaps how a Willpower Tank has an easier time patching up Psi defenses than an Invuln Tank. Sets have drawbacks and advantages, that's what makes them interesting. If we try to minimize this and water everything down we might as well just go the WoW route and give everyone everything and call it day.
My issue isn't with differences existing, it's with the differences not feeling meaningful to the gameplay experience. Some sets have a more difficult time getting to +22% tohit than others, and that is variance within sets, yes. However, as many people have stated, getting +22% tohit is as simple as slotting kismet and tactics. Getting permanent fast snipe is of far greater benefit than pretty much anything else you can do with 1 power pick and a few enhancement slots, so the variance between sets is simply that either you have a built-in way to attain permanent fast snipes, or you pay the power tax and get permanent fast snipes. It's a far lower barrier to entry than softcapping defense.
I'm all for avoiding the homogenisation of powersets with interesting differences between them, but quick snipes are already homogenised - everyone either has them, or jumps through a hoop to get them. I just think that the hoop should either be removed, or replaced with something that actually adds diversity to how different powersets interact with snipes. Right now, it just offers the illusion of variance and a low bar for inexperienced players to trip over.
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The change was made by the developers, who made the sets, so design was taken into account, yes. Had it been so widely different, they would've made changes to those sets to account for them; this wasn't done by a group of random people who didn't work on the game for years, as is the current case. There was a trade-off between choosing devices and other secondaries then, and there still is now. I fail to see how it wasn't intentional when the devs made that change...intentionally. But alrighty man.
Easy fix for mix-ups and mislabels is to change them, which can be easily done. Not change up an entire gimmick because someone doesn't feel like spending 20 mins to buy a Kismet and slot Tactics, honestly. That's just being lazy.
Regardless of how terrible this design decision is, and the pushback for it, I expect it to be pushed right on through to live, anyways. So, no reason to continue talking about it.
Ultimately if the entire gimmick can be bypassed by a kismet and tactics, I just don't think it's an interesting or valuable gimmick. If there is to be a gimmick around snipes, I'd like to see it be one that offers interesting gameplay decisions rather than is 'solved' at a baseline build level.
Still, if fixing the mix-ups and mislabels is easy, I definitely hope it's something the Homecoming team gets to.
I think we've both made our positions clear enough - hopefully it gives the team some food for thought!
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Yeah man, it's a crazy idea that people who might not understand things, like, you know. Ask bout it. Or something. And then someone tells them, and so they learn something new. And then they tell someone else who didn't know about it. That's crazy. I guess I just ALWAYS knew to slot a Kismet and take Tactics, just inherently. I was never told about it, or asked about it. I just knew it. At all times.
And it's almost like...I dunno. Taking certain powersets that give you something but take away something else is...I dunno. It's like a uh. What do you call it? Oh, like a tradeoff or something! You know, like if I take /Devices. SO, like. I don't get build-up like most other 2ndaries. But oh hey, look, I get this cool thing called Targetting Drone. That's neat. Oh hey, I don't have to do this whole Kismet/Tactics things at all now! I guess that's a pretty good trade-off! Neat!
But yeah, that whole tax thing is a real big oof. You're right, I should have just an easy enough time capping my S/L defense on a Regen Scrapper as I should on a SR Scrapper! Without having to pay all this tax! That doesnt make sense!
You seem to be missing the part where it's a tradeoff that clearly wasn't accounted for in the set design, because other than blaster secondaries, all of the sets that are paired with blasts were designed and balanced before the i24 snipe change was introduced.
Trade-offs can be good, but they are not inherently good, and this is a trade-off that was not accounted for when the support sets were initially created and balanced. That some support sets are more offensively powerful due to having an easier time doing damage because of how instant snipes work in i24 is not an intended feature, it is a consequence of the snipe change that should be addressed.
As for complexity, if a core aspect of a power needs to be explained from one player to another because of poor documentation and numbers not being clearly visible, that's a problem. The game routinely mixing up its terms for accuracy and tohit is only making this worse.
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1 Kismet + Tactics isn't easy?
Wow, every set can get those too!
Pretty neat, too. Shame I can't get to Defense soft cap in 4 slots.
It's easy for us players who know about the mechanics, have the inf, understand when 'tohit' is mislabelled as 'accuracy', and so on. It's not as easy for players who don't have that knowledge, and not interacting with that complexity shouldn't lock people out of having a usable snipe.
It's also a tax on sets that don't inherently bring some +tohit to the table. It arbitrarily gives those sets more power/enhancement slots because they don't need to spend them on kismet, tactics and slotting tactics. Further, they need to spend endurance running tactics.
None of this was accounted for in the design for the sets other than blaster secondaries. These issues should be obvious, and have nothing to do with how easy or difficult it is to build for the defense softcap.
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Id say sitting at the base values Defense gives you and face tanking mobs versus the soft-cap is a pretty noticeable divergent, yes.
But sitting at 45% defense vs 44% defense doesn't make a very noticeable difference. Armour sets that are built to focus on defense are often possible, if not easy, to softcap with SO enhancements alone. Armour sets that are not built to focus on defense have other benefits to make up for it and bring the survivability in line with defense sets.
Meanwhile, sitting at +21% and +22% tohit is night and day for single target damage. Secondaries that are built to provide +tohit reach this incredible increase in damage and usability with ease, while the secondaries not built to buff tohit do not tend to have any other benefits to make up for the loss of the fast snipe. Support sets were simply not built with the +22% cut-off in mind.
If you roll a corrupter, the way in which your primary snipe ability functions at a base level will be fundamentally changed by whether the support set you pick gives you +tohit or not. This isn't balanced because the devs simply never balanced the sets for it. That a /traps corrupter needs to pay a steep power/IO tax to reach the same damage levels as a /time corrupter because of this detail feels like nothing other than the unintended side effect of a change that the original devs only had half-finished before the game was shut down.
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I've been pretty vocal about this on the discord, but I'll put my thoughts here for posterity.
While there are many aspects to this snipe change, I think that getting rid of the +22% tohit buff requirement for fastsnipes is good. +22% tohit is a number that is at once easy for players knowledgeable about game mechanics to reach with IOs, but difficult for players who have no interest in the deeper numeric mechanics of the game. H
Can we just have 3-slotted Defensive powers give 45% defense because players who have ni interest in the deeper numeric mehcanics of the game can't get there? Sounds good to me, let's do it!
There's a big difference between the defense softcap, something that people without an interest in the deeper mechanics of the game may not even know about if they reached it because it's not something you'd notice as divergent from the normal functioning of the game, and fast snipes.
Fast snipes make an ability act completely differently, and in a way that is actually useful in combat. Fiddling with IOs is, for a lot of sets, a requirement to make these abilities function in a manner that is useful and powerful, and acts very differently to how they do 'out of the box'.
Defense is just a number that makes you harder to hit as you get more of it. No one needs 45% defense to make one of their powers usable. It's a totally different situation.
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I've been pretty vocal about this on the discord, but I'll put my thoughts here for posterity.
While there are many aspects to this snipe change, I think that getting rid of the +22% tohit buff requirement for fastsnipes is good. +22% tohit is a number that is at once easy for players knowledgeable about game mechanics to reach with IOs, but difficult for players who have no interest in the deeper numeric mechanics of the game. Having the base functionality of snipes change based on a value that to a lot of players is under-the-hood is confusing and unintuitive to people who don't already have a firm grasp on how to build characters, not to mention at odds with how no other power in the game is affected in such a distinct manner by your characters numerical values.
It also makes certain secondaries far stronger than others, which may have been designed for with blaster secondaries, but support and dominator sets do not feel as though they were well tuned to all benefit equally from the requirement.
Unfortunately, slow snipes have always been awful, so I think removing the +22% tohit buff requirement from fast snipes in the manner proposed in the patch notes feels like a fair compromise between usability and maintaining their thematic 'snipe' status. Some people in this thread have proposed alternate methods for 'activating' fast snipe than having it permanently on, and I don't have a problem with those ideas either - making the fast snipe work more like assassins strike or street justice in that it functions on a combo system would feel more intuitive and in-line with other things in the game than having to build for a statistical threshold for the ability to be useful.
As far as the range, cooldown, and time before 'out of combat' go, these changes seem like they could use tuning. Hopefully beta testing will help show what these values should be if the fast snipe mechanic is implemented as it currently exists in the beta.
Something that I think it is important to keep in mind is that while ranged damage has been getting buffed, most ranged damage sets have always had trouble with single target output. Historically, melee has been a lot more potent in single target damage per second, a lot sturdier up close, and melee range is the easiest place to receive buffs from teammates. I don't feel like this is 'a buff too far' - bringing ranged damage a little closer to what scrappers, stalkers and brutes are capable of to a single target right now feels like a good move. AoE is a nice thing to be able to bring a team, but a lot of the content in the game is designed around single, difficult enemies. A more accessible fast snipe will help blasters who aren't fire or ice feel more viable in those situations.
Focused Feedback: Blast Power Set Updates
in [Open Beta] Focused Feedback
Posted
I won't belabour the point in Incinerator, but ~71dpa is extremely low for a single target power at tier 8 of a blast set. Blaze is 170, bitter ice blast is 133 with hefty debuffs attached. Even disregarding the top dog damage sets, water jet is 85dpa with the benefit of getting to use it twice - and it just got buffed. Even Sonic has Screech at 95, with a hold and debuff attached.
I could go on but I won't. I've complained about boring ST damage nature of Incinerator, but please understand: It is, on its own merits, a bad power.