Feedback: Testing Melee Set Performance

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Infinitum said:

the itf wasnt easy either because they had a stacking defense debuff that was murder on an invul, thats from a tanks perspective which is all I played for the longest time.

This is the exact reason I love my SR and Shield characters so very, very much.

[Hopeling]

59 minutes ago, Vayek said:

Why are you asking for a nerf of a set that already isn't very popular because of long cast times outside of momentum? And lets not forget the fact that the set is incredibly endurance heavy aswell, while other power sets that potentially do more damage but cost far less (fire is a great example).

 

I personally love Titan Weapons and really don't want them to go invent problems where there aren't any just to nerf the set.

I love when somebody comes into a 27-page thread clearly not having read past the first post.

 

Also, TW is the #1 most popular scrapper set at 50, just to keep the record straight.

[Galaxy Brain]

I went through and mapped out the average resists of enemy groups (61 of them from a data source on Discord) to see what damage types are actually most resisted.

 

Smashing is resisted by nearly half the game to varying degrees, but usually is is not by that much:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1arWBGWuwGCWqSrkLgnWK26xNTrILUO_QNKn8034A3L0/edit#gid=0

[TheAdjustor]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I went through and mapped out the average resists of enemy groups (61 of them from a data source on Discord) to see what damage types are actually most resisted.

 

Smashing is resisted by nearly half the game to varying degrees, but usually is is not by that much:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1arWBGWuwGCWqSrkLgnWK26xNTrILUO_QNKn8034A3L0/edit#gid=0

 

That seems to be a very abbreviated version of Culex's spreadsheet

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20070309030440/http://www.culex.us/ig/CHres.xls

 

Which has 1366 rows of data and shows the data on particular enemies not group averages. Wow there are some pretty big resistances on here. I always new that DE had some high resistances but no idea it was this much and that's without the buff pets.

 

Real shout out to Culex for compiling that sheet. It's truly amazing the labors of love this game was able to inspire.

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Galaxy Brain]

Yes, this is based on Culex's but as you said it has over a thousand rows to look through. 

 

This one is condensed by enemy group, as it is exceptionally rare to have a mission where there is only 1 enemy type from a faction throughout.  It's more realistic to look at the average resists throughout a fraction to see what resists you'd most ost likely face.

[Sniktch]

One last thought regarding this:

 

Even Borderlands 2, a game that was by design philosophy about going so far over the top that the crew of the ISS lost sight of you a week ago, had nerfs.  Beehawk, Rough Rider/Redeem the Soul/Release The Beast, I could go digging for more but I shouldn't have to.  None of those 'broke the game' precisely - but all of them made certain things way better than intended, and thus limited what the devs could do for further things.  It also had buffs for a fair number of underperforming things.  You can't just buff forever, nerf never - nor the inverse.  Both halves are needed to keep a multiplayer game healthy.  And I note very few folks in the "touch nothing!" camp dared give a straight, unequivocal answer to Powerhouse's question - evasions, equivocations, diversions, answering questions not asked, but not just saying "I'd nerf the massive outlier" despite it being exactly what any sane design philosophy would call for.

[DSorrow]

26 minutes ago, Sniktch said:

None of those 'broke the game' precisely - but all of them made certain things way better than intended, and thus limited what the devs could do for further things.

This here is my number one concern with TW. It doesn't really break anything right now, but when there's a distinct lack of parity between powersets planning an appropriate difficulty level for new content is going to be a nightmare. As a slightly less urgent concern I think we have to think about how important game balance is in general, if it's not very important (i.e. massive outliers are fine if they don't break anything) then it's pretty hard to argue that any underperformers need to be fixed either so long as they aren't completely useless.

 

26 minutes ago, Sniktch said:

"I'd nerf the massive outlier" despite it being exactly what any sane design philosophy would call for.

Here it's mostly a false dichotomy of only having two options: do nothing or do the EM. It's an easy un-argument when nobody has asked for the latter but something closer to nerf the "massive" out of the outlier so it's still going to be top tier but no longer its own tier.

 

For now I'll wait for some test results on TW. If they show that the set's performance is within a reasonable range of other sets in normal gameplay like situations, I'll happily retreat back to my original position of "TW is fine as it is" and let it have great solo performance as its niche. 

Edited September 17, 2019 by DSorrow

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Sniktch said:

One last thought regarding this:

 

Even Borderlands 2, a game that was by design philosophy about going so far over the top that the crew of the ISS lost sight of you a week ago, had nerfs.  Beehawk, Rough Rider/Redeem the Soul/Release The Beast, I could go digging for more but I shouldn't have to.  None of those 'broke the game' precisely - but all of them made certain things way better than intended, and thus limited what the devs could do for further things.  It also had buffs for a fair number of underperforming things.  You can't just buff forever, nerf never - nor the inverse.  Both halves are needed to keep a multiplayer game healthy.  And I note very few folks in the "touch nothing!" camp dared give a straight, unequivocal answer to Powerhouse's question - evasions, equivocations, diversions, answering questions not asked, but not just saying "I'd nerf the massive outlier" despite it being exactly what any sane design philosophy would call for.

You're speaking my language 😉

 

Having just finished development on Borderlands 2.5 a solid month before BL3's release, diving into that code you can see all the revisions and how certain things got altered with time. Sometimes, nerfs are necessary if they effect the health of a game going forward.

 

For context, Borderlands 2 is a First Person Shooter / RPG Hybrid with a massive emphasis on loot. Your character choice determined what skills you get, which were mostly passive abilities outside of the "Action Skill", which then interacted with the various gear to make certain gear better on certain characters, and so on. In CoH terms, you can think of the gear as powers / power sets and the characters as AT's.

 

The example here that stands out to me is the "Beehawk". In the game, there are two items called "The Bee" and "The Sand Hawk". The Bee was a shield that, while it was at 100% capacity, would add a substantial amount of damage to every shot you made with your weapons. If you took damage and the shield went to even 99% capacity the bonus would stop, but the shield's capacity was very small anyways which made skills that replenished shields or boost shields improve the Bee dramatically. The Sand Hawk was a gun that fired a cool bird-shaped projectile, sort of like a " ^v^ ", using multiple bullets to achieve the effect. It was a unique weapon in that it was sort of like an Uzi with very high fire rate, but having x9 damage due to multiple bullets.

 

Normally, the Bee would divide it's damage with shotgun-type weapons. So if the bee gave +1000 damage, a shotgun with 10 bullets per spread would be 1000/10 = 100 per bullet. This was not the case on the Sand Hawk, as the bullets were part of a special pattern that appears after the gun is fired so each of the bullets got the full bonus. Put those together with the high fire rate and well.... things would just die before they could even damage you to stop the Bee's amplification. All characters benefited from this, some more than others, but it was still degenerate as the combo straight up invalidated other strategies. This had to be nerfed in order to maintain the goal of the game which is incredible build diversity through unique gear combinations. Buffing the rest of the game to account for the incredibly power of the BeeHawk would simply mean that anything besides that combo, or similar combos, would just be an unfun chore at best.

 

By nerfing that outlier (via slapping the Bee Shield's attributes), the strategy became more high risk / high reward + not as potent a reward as it was prior. This allowed other strategies to become viable as they could now compete with the BeeHawk, instead of needing to BeeHawk to compete.

 

A similar philosophy could be seen here. If a specific powerset combo is incredibly strong, then it will always be a sticking point for game balance. If new content, or general difficulty tweaks / options get introduced, then sets / combos that are very strong may need to be eyeballed to fit the goals of content shifts.

 

[TheAdjustor]

5 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Yes, this is based on Culex's but as you said it has over a thousand rows to look through. 

 

This one is condensed by enemy group, as it is exceptionally rare to have a mission where there is only 1 enemy type from a faction throughout.  It's more realistic to look at the average resists throughout a fraction to see what resists you'd most ost likely face.

Quote

You're speaking my language 😉

 

Having just finished development on Borderlands 2.5 a solid month before BL3's release, diving into that code you can see all the revisions and how certain things got altered with time. Sometimes, nerfs are necessary if they effect the health of a game going forward.

 

 

Man I really want to give both of those a golf clap.

 

With the first one Titan weapons is supposedly "Overperforming" in single target damage.  So the concern isn't burning minions and underlings, it's the bosses that have to be killed before you can move on. Taking a group average only matters for the farming scenario where you are trying burn down an aggro cap worth of bosses on you, really not even then. It will always be the resistance of the bosses in the group.

 

The second ? Melee has been over powered for almost entire lifetime of the game never stopped people playing other things. Hell as things stand, for mostly damage ATs  blasters are still number three in damage somewhere between tankers and brutes but you know what ? They are still intensely popular. Matter of fact there are more level 50 fire blasters than there are level 50 TW scrappers. 

 

So yes if you want to ignore how the game actually plays and its observed history there's a good case you have there. Of course I have never heard anyone say, "Gee lets play that game they are nerfing things". Maybe that's just me.

 

Sad to say this thread was already over by the time I noticed it.  We have a developer who's job is to balance things, that creates a need to do things even when the best course of action is do nothing and concentrate on the creative action that actually improves the game. Couple the above with the usual forum crowd that enjoys screwing with other players nerfs are now likely inevitable no matter what "testing" shows or how biased it may be.  That's unfortunate because it's this sort of thing that does drive people away.

 

What's next ? Nerf fire blast. It outdoes every other blaster set in damage by considerably more than 30% (exception being procced out ice)

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Hopeling]

If you want to make another spreadsheet with just bosses, go for it.

46 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

What's next ? Nerf fire blast. It outdoes every other blaster set in damage by considerably more than 30% (exception being procced out ice)

We've had this exact conversation before, back on page 24. You didn't respond about it again after that comment, but now you're bringing it up as if it's a new point. Fire Blast should do more damage than other blast sets, because in exchange it does nothing else. That is not the situation with TW. Do you feel that you have something new to say about this, or that it wasn't addressed properly? Otherwise, I'm not sure what good it does to bring it up again.

[TheAdjustor]

1 minute ago, Hopeling said:

If you want to make another spreadsheet with just bosses, go for it.

We've had this exact conversation before, back on page 24. You didn't respond about it again after that comment, but now you're bringing it up as if it's a new point. Fire Blast should do more damage than other blast sets, because in exchange it does nothing else. That is not the situation with TW. Do you feel that you have something new to say about this, or that it wasn't addressed properly? Otherwise, I'm not sure what good it does to bring it up again.

Sorry I don't recall what you are speaking about. It would have helped if you linked to it.

[Hopeling]

I did.

[TheAdjustor]

9 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

I did.

Sorry didn't realize that was a link my eyes aren't what they used to be.  Anyway here is your quote.

 

Quote

Not just on the basis of its damage, but that's because the comparison here goes the other way. Fire Blast deals more damage than Ice Blast because Ice Blast gets much better secondary effects; that's a fair tradeoff. But if Fiery Melee deals less damage than TW, and TW gets much better secondary effects, where's the tradeoff?

 

No Idea why I didn't cover that the first time, it's rather low hanging fruit and really I would have thought you knew better than that. Ice can actually have better single target damage than fire while still being immensely safer.  Being able to stack a mag 5 hold on targets while having just about every other mitigation trick in the book available to you (-to hit, soft control, and killing them before they actually get to hit you at all). Isn't even a valid comparison.

 

Ice is also a good example of why pylon testing isn't particularly a good metric. Pylons don't knock down and have high debuff resistances. It's also why I laugh when people in that thread go into a tizzy over -regen. Pylons have an 85% give or take resistance to regen debuffs.

 

Edit: You did realize I was speaking of Fire Blast, not Fire melee ?

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[BrandX]

15 hours ago, Hopeling said:

I love when somebody comes into a 27-page thread clearly not having read past the first post.

 

Also, TW is the #1 most popular scrapper set at 50, just to keep the record straight.

Yes, but it's only popular with a few sets.

 

TW/BIO ..  a combo that gives more damage and has ways of helping end issues.

 

That's at #2, with the next TW combo being #13 with TW/WP.  Another combo that has ways to help End Issues and no redraw.

 

Then it falls to #23 with TW/RAD another combo that has End helping aspects.

 

However, using the #1 position as the reason to say it's the best doesn't work well, when the #1 Secondary is Regeneration, which no one goes about saying is the best Secondary.

[TheAdjustor]

36 minutes ago, BrandX said:

However, using the #1 position as the reason to say it's the best doesn't work well, when the #1 Secondary is Regeneration, which no one goes about saying is the best Secondary.

There's been a lot of abuse of statistics (perhaps unintentional) in this thread.  It's been especially bad with people discarding every other metric you need to judge a set.

 

You see the worst of it with people writing off the inherently more complex mechanics of some sets because they aren't a problem for them. It's the ultimate "why we can't have nice things" setup.

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Galaxy Brain]

If you want numbers just on specific ranks of enemies, I can gather that info as well.

 

I did the group averages since missions give you an assortment. Sure, a Council boss may have high lethal resist, but if the boss is a vampire and not a werewolf it may not. The Minions and LTs also need to be cleared in a mission as well and would factor into performance. Would you rather we throw the hardest targets at each set and see if it still shines? Because we can emulate that.

 

Pylons test ST, Farms test ease of AoE. Both are biased, every test will be in some small way, the best we can do is try to accommodate a wide variety of factors to let sets shine in different ways.

[Hopeling]

30 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

No Idea why I didn't cover that the first time, it's rather low hanging fruit and really I would have thought you knew better than that. Ice can actually have better single target damage than fire while still being immensely safer.

Better single-target damage if you take full advantage of procs, sure. Fire still offers better AoE thanks to Fireball, and gets top-tier ST with fewer power choices and without spending slots on procs (giving it more freedom to eg pursue set bonuses). Again, that's a tradeoff. If TW does more damage than Fiery Melee in ST and in AoE before counting procs, can slot more procs, and has secondary effects, where's the tradeoff?

 

I think there might also be an argument to be made that, while Fire Blast and Ice Blast do more damage than other blast sets, they are where blast sets "should" be, and that most other blast sets really are underpowered, making them another example of the situation I outlined in response to Captain Powerhouse. I haven't put enough thought into that to decide whether I really believe it, but it's at least plausible to me. But you and I seem to agree that melee has been very good for most of the game's life, so it does not make sense to say that TW is the only melee set up to par and that other melee sets should be brought up to match.

30 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

It's also why I laugh when people in that thread go into a tizzy over -regen. Pylons have an 85% give or take resistance to regen debuffs.

Yes, as do AVs. Regeneration debuffs typically come in very large quantities like -500% to make up for this though. Even with AV/pylon debuff resistances, something like Lingering Radiation will still remove most of the target's regeneration.

 

When people say small regen debuffs like Diamagnetic Interface are significantly helpful against AVs, yeah, that's silly.

30 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Edit: You did realize I was speaking of Fire Blast, not Fire melee ?

Yes, of course. You used it as an analogy for TW: TW outperforms other melee sets like Fire Blast outperforms other blast sets. I'm saying that analogy goes the wrong way around: Fire Blast does more damage as a tradeoff for not having other things, but TW isn't the melee set with no secondary effects, Fiery Melee is.

26 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Yes, but it's only popular with a few sets.

 

TW/BIO ..  a combo that gives more damage and has ways of helping end issues.

 

That's at #2, with the next TW combo being #13 with TW/WP.  Another combo that has ways to help End Issues and no redraw.

 

Then it falls to #23 with TW/RAD another combo that has End helping aspects.

 

However, using the #1 position as the reason to say it's the best doesn't work well, when the #1 Secondary is Regeneration, which no one goes about saying is the best Secondary.

Out of 538 level 50 TW scrappers, 277 are TW/Bio. If we subtract those out, there are another 261 more TW scrappers, which puts it at around the same popularity as Rad, Psi, Claws, and Street Justice. Still not unpopular, just middling.

 

I agree that popularity isn't a very useful indicator of balance, since there are lots of reasons a powerset can be popular. As I said, it was just to keep the record straight: it is factually untrue that TW is an unpopular set.

Edited September 17, 2019 by Hopeling

[MunkiLord]

20 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Ice is also a good example of why pylon testing isn't particularly a good metric. Pylons don't knock down and have high debuff resistances. It's also why I laugh when people in that thread go into a tizzy over -regen. Pylons have an 85% give or take resistance to regen debuffs.

I know you're talking about the Pylon not getting knocked down. But if I could figure out how to slot enough KB protection into my Ice/Fire Blaster without hurting my damage or recharge, I think I can get it close(ish) to TW times. Won't be able to get it to 60 seconds, but I think the right player with some luck can get Ice/Fire around 70 seconds.

[TheAdjustor]

10 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I know you're talking about the Pylon not getting knocked down. But if I could figure out how to slot enough KB protection into my Ice/Fire Blaster without hurting my damage or recharge, I think I can get it close(ish) to TW times. Won't be able to get it to 60 seconds, but I think the right player with some luck can get Ice/Fire around 70 seconds.

I don't doubt it The PPM system really benefited Ice. Oh just a note, KD was indeed in the main focus, but also the fact you can't hold a pylon. ( I think controllers get containment because they are immobilized but that's a side topic)

 

11 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Better single-target damage if you take full advantage of procs, sure. Fire still offers better AoE thanks to Fireball, and doesn't need to slot a bunch of procs to do it (giving it more freedom to eg pursue set bonuses). Again, that's a tradeoff. If TW does more damage than Fiery Melee in ST and in AoE before counting procs, can slot more procs, and has secondary effects, where's the tradeoff?

 

Firey Melee is behind lots of things. Do you really want it to be the scrapper "Top End" ?  By the reasoning in this thread it should be the absolute top damage set. It has no secondary effect except damage, disadvantages have all been tossed to the curb

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[BrandX]

9 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Out of 538 level 50 TW scrappers, 277 are TW/Bio. If we subtract those out, there are another 261 more TW scrappers, which puts it at around the same popularity as Rad, Psi, Claws, and Street Justice. Still not unpopular, just middling.

 

I agree that popularity isn't a very useful indicator of balance, since there are lots of reasons a powerset can be popular. As I said, it was just to keep the record straight: it is factually untrue that TW is an unpopular set.

 

Yes, but it could also be popular because it's a set that gets one feeling super strength like.

 

You're carrying around a huge sword!

 

Go to the other Melee AT's with access to TW and it's not nearly as popular.

 

5th place on Brutes, and the general feeling for most players, is Brutes do more damage.

 

On Tanker's it falls to 6th.

 

And on all those top times, those are some pretty tricked out builds going around.  That generally rely on t4 everything.

[Hopeling]

10 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Firey Melee is behind lots of things. Do you really want it to be the scrapper "Top End" ?  By the reasoning in this thread it should be the absolute top damage set. It has no secondary effect except damage, disadvantages have all been tossed to the curb

On what basis are you saying FM is behind lots of things? According to eg Kaeladin's spreadsheet, it's #3 behind TW and Savage. This seems to be roughly borne out in play; my Fiery Melee characters consistently feel like they have damage at least as good as most others.

 

I'm not trying to make any point about FM, but about TW, since that is the topic of discussion. I'm saying that I don't think TW vs other melee is analogous to Fire Blast vs other blast sets, because Fire Blast gets extra damage as a tradeoff for everything else, but TW doesn't make such tradeoffs for its extra damage.

9 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Yes, but it could also be popular because it's a set that gets one feeling super strength like.

Right, like I said, there are lots of reasons a powerset can be popular. We're not disagreeing.

Edited September 17, 2019 by Hopeling

[TheAdjustor]

Just now, Hopeling said:

On what basis are you saying FM is behind lots of things? According to eg Kaeladin's spreadsheet, it's #3 behind TW and Savage. This seems to be roughly borne out in play; my Fiery Melee characters consistently feel like they have damage at least as good as most others.

 

I'm not saying that Fiery Melee should be the top end. I'm saying that I don't think TW vs other melee is analogous to Fire Blast vs other blast sets, because Fire Blast gets extra damage as a tradeoff for everything else, but TW doesn't make such tradeoffs for its extra damage.

I am not familiar with the spreadsheet you mention.  Sorry to be asking for a link again but do you have a link ? I have no idea how he arrived at that or how it was paired.

[Hopeling]

12 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

I am not familiar with the spreadsheet you mention.  Sorry to be asking for a link again but do you have a link ? I have no idea how he arrived at that or how it was paired.

You can google it if you want, but it isn't the point. I have no idea whether it's accurate either. I'm literally just asking where you're getting the idea that FM is behind lots of things in damage, because whether it's accurate or not, Kaeladin's spreadsheet is to my knowledge the only attempt anyone has made to directly rank powersets by damage.

Edited September 17, 2019 by Hopeling

[TheAdjustor]

4 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

You can google it if you want, but it isn't the point. I have no idea whether it's accurate either. I'm literally just asking where you're getting the idea that FM is behind lots of things in damage, because whether it's accurate or not, Kaeladin's spreadsheet is to my knowledge the only attempt anyone has made to directly rank powersets by damage.

I was going on my experience on live and here. I had a fire/shield scrapper back in the day and recreated her here. Single Target was OK, but most of that came from Against All Odds.

 

Quote

It seems like FM is actually drawing us away from the main point here though. I'm not trying to make a point about FM, but about TW: if it deals much better damage than all other sets, where's the tradeoff?

 

TW has a variety of tradeoffs that have been repeatedly brought up repeatedly. It's an endhog and needs very high levels of recharge not being the least.  It also has a complicated and variable attack chain that depends on if you do or do not have momentum.

Edited September 17, 2019 by TheAdjustor
Edited: To reply to Hopelin's edit

[MunkiLord]

14 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

I am not familiar with the spreadsheet you mention.  Sorry to be asking for a link again but do you have a link ? I have no idea how he arrived at that or how it was paired.

It's in this thread, first post. Good stuff and Kaeladin is credible.

 

Here is the actual spreadsheet:   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1av2vWL9UVgGw183BbjFNweJze7N5P3Tn8tYSppdFQgE/edit#gid=890463997