Captain Powerhouse

Exactly!

Everything I tested today was using SOs. I don’t considere it a “so what” scenario.

So a bit on the whole thought process behind the direction of these changes: Dark Melee has a lot of utility and some extremely powerful +Dmg in Soul Drain, combining into some of the best ST damage in the game (without being broken.) The set performs way too poorly on AoE, though. There are only two powers that can viably be buffed to add the set some AoE: shadow maul and consume. Consume is a high recharge near-infinite source of endurance. Due to its great +endurance utility, lowering its recharge to something like 20s or less, making it a more traditional AoE, becomes a non-starter. Removing the +end utility is also out of the question. So, Shadow Maul aside, the goal was to keep Dark Consumption somewhat high recharge and give it high damage. So the goal wasn’t to give DM a mini-nuke as much as being cornered into that being the only option without straight out adding a 10th power or breaking the cottage rule. My initial testing (done on Tanker Build) was promising. But once it was realized how it performed on Scrappers and high-fury brutes, it was obvious the damage was too high. The problem is not even all the damage delivered over a full mission, but how the use of the power alone could clear minions too easily even on an SO build, eliminating way too quickly sources of damage and generating unintended safety. I am not happy with the current state either, though, it’s much weaker than I was expecting as I miss judged the impact of the endurance scaling portion not being affected by slotted enhancements. Given the goal is to add more damage over the course of a mission without introducing too many quick clears, and without reducing the recharge of the power, I have decided to simply change the damage delivery method for the next iteration, in addition to once more adjust the damage expression. I have not finalized work on this, but the next iteration will deliver the bulk of the damage in DoT form. That will help maintain high damage per click of Dark Equilibrium/Consumption while helping avoiding the inherent safety of a single power removing too many hostile units.

Historically, the developers of the game would rename a power if it was changed significantly for a single power set to create a distinction between the two different flavors of the power. Example: Conserve Energy in Electricity and Energy armor-sets was renamed to Energize when they got attributes that would not ever be copied over to other versions of Conserve Power. As for crits: that wont be changing, the power wont crit.

There is nothing stopping pseudopets from critting. Not only does each AT actually have their own version of each one of these powers, pets can also check the AT of their owners to know if they can trigger a particular effect. On top of that the tanker version has not been a pseudo pet for a while, and the others will transition to be executePowers soon-ish.

I don't have an ETA, lots of stuff going on right now between the new set and other pending changes that still have not even made it to testing yet.

Lightning Rod does not crit. Shield Charge does not crit. Basically: melee mini-nukes are not intended to crit.

The current formula in test is simply Scale * EndPercentage Still pending internal testing but the upcoming change will be: Half the damage will be affected by enhancements and buffs. The other half will scale based on how much endurance you have, but ignore enhancements and buffs.

To clarify: the change is going to be specific to Dark Consumption and nothing else. Right now, Soul Drain X10 foes (potentially with BU proc) followed by DC at full endurance is just too much damage at the start of a fight, especially on Scrappers that have a 25% higher DMG Buff modifiers. Every bit of +DMG will still increase damage, but it will work as a curve. The alternative is to significantly lower the damage of Dark Consumption for everyone just to prevent high end scrapper builds (And some brute/tanks too) from getting out of hand. I prefer to try control the max damage than to try to control the base 3SO damage.

You have Max 115.9 points of endurance. For your character, 115.9 = 100%. Side note: in a future patch the formula used by the power will be modified to use Damage buffs in a unique way. Basically, the power will not be able to be buffed drastically with tons of damage buffs.

Its hard for Fire Melee to do extremely well on IO world due to it having no side effects to slot for other than more damage. The set might be reviewed in the future, even on SOs it is not as high ranking as it should for a set that just does more damage as a secondary effect. This is more of an issue with PPM procs, though, something that needs addressing sooner or later.

For the record: Scrapper version of Dark Consumption (soon to be renamed Dark Equilibrium) is a bit out of wack. Its not intended to crit. Crits on the power are going away on the next revision.

Gaussian is not broken, it’s meant to proc on players. Soulbound is meant to proc on pets.

Good catch, someone give this person a bug hunter badge. Tool set was erroneously thinking the power was doing 5 ticks. Issue has been fixed and power will be adjusted in a future patch. To be exact: Recharge going down to 11 seconds Endurance cost goes down to 11.024 Damage increased to scale 1.6184* *This is higher than the formula might imply because Melee cones get 2ft radius for "free" due to legacy reasons. (At some point all melee attacks were 5ft, standard melee range was increased to 7ft but that increase never touched cone damage, so melee cones are measured at radius - 2ft.)

There are more things coming down the line, dont expect everything to be a buff. But note that in my testing, Dark Melee still is on the lower side of AoE damage output. If used optimally it can yield some fun alpha strike numbers, but over time, keeping in mind you wont always have full endurance, its not that crazy. This game is, like it or not, heavy on the enemy spawns, and every set should have at least some access to tools to deal with multiple foes more efficiently. That said, nothing will be buffed to Titan Weapons current levels, and i have made no secret that TW over performs.

Clarification since I seen this statement a few times: Dark Consumption’s Radius was not increased.

Sounds like a sound file is missing from the build...

This Dark Consumption wont proliferate to those powers, ever. The Dark Melee version might be renamed to denote it is a different power.

Energy Melee complaints can be summarized in two points: Anemic AoE Extremely slow animations Different people might focus on one or the other, but both are big issues overall.

Dark melee was first because it was the easiest to adjust as it had powers that could simply be buffed for AoE. Martial Arts and Energy Melee are also due AoE buffs but those are harder since they only have one AoE power and the Stalker versions have nothing, so it will require fancier special mechanics or blurring the cottage rule a bit.

Playing catchup on the thread so sorry if this has been covered but this is accurate. Damage is similar at 100% endurance, but the power still only has a 10 target cap on scrappers and brutes while Lightning Rod is 16 targets on all ATs, and the radius is way smaller at 8ft vs Lightning Rods 20ft radius.

Taunt mag only means anything if the target has Taunt Protection (Bosses have a tiny bit, requiring mag 4 for taunts to work on them) Tanker and Brute Taunts are all Mag 4 The only difference now is Tanker Taunt lasts a couple seconds more than Brute Taunt. Taunt The Power should almost always steal aggro from any other Brute or Tanker, unless the other Tanker/Brute taunted first OR heavily enhanced some attacks for Taunting.

To clarify: Pet Sets like Soulbound specifically should proc when pets use powers, and buff the pet. They should not buff the caster. Other procs (like, Performance Shifter or Assassin's ATO's Proc for instance) should only proc on the player when summoned/placed, not any pet. Right now its bugged, and all behaving like non-pet sets.

This is an oversight, Pet Sets like this one should be the other way around: only proc on the pet not the caster.

The taunt has never been auto-hit. No proc can do that, the base power must be auto-hit. What is Auto-Hit is the AoE on the main target. This still requires the main target to be hit, though.