Focused Feedback: Rage

[Captain Citadel]

59 minutes ago, Megajoule said:

True, thanks for the reminder.

It would pretty much have to be another attack, and I admit I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

This would probably be horribly imbalanced because only Shield Defense has one right now AFAIK, but a jumping teleport gap-closer would kick ass, if they removed Rage and baked it into the set (which I think would be thematically appropriate because it is SUPER Strength, i.e. you are mightier than other melee heroes).

[Megajoule]

No, they're right.  While I'd prefer it gone for all of the reasons I've already stated, there's (IMO) no way to make just eliminating a power, with no replacement, work mechanically and practically,

 

Tangent over.  Sorry, everyone.

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Megajoule

[Noyjitat]

2 hours ago, Megajoule said:

It was bugged.  It was a known bug, that they just never got around to fixing.  You want it to go back to the bugged version because you know how to exploit it.  No thank you.

Yet it was left alone for 23 issues. Sure....

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, Captain Citadel said:

It doesn't solve the issue of people like me who slotted LotG into their build to benefit Foot Stomp and Knockout Blow, and took Ageless as their Destiny-slot Incarnate power to benefit their team because it refills their endurance bars. I can take the recharge directly out of Rage and still be way over the double-stack threshold. Making high recharge bad on an auto-cast power because it becomes too easy to double-stack (which we will be penalized for not avoiding now, instead of just being penalized for using the power at all which is already bad) is extremely counter-intuitive and unfun.

I’m with you on the single Rage idea, I am just thinking that if we get saddled with what’s on test, then Having it affected by other player recharge buffs really needs to be there.

[Kimuji]

2 hours ago, Megajoule said:

It was bugged.  It was a known bug, that they just never got around to fixing.  You want it to go back to the bugged version because you know how to exploit it.  No thank you.

But Rage is being modified precisely because people whined about the def crash bug being fixed. If this topic even exists that's because it was fixed and a lot of people didn't want it to be fixed.

I had no issues with the fix. But I certainly have an issue with the way SS is going to be completely altered just to accomodate those unable/unwilling to adapt to the way it had always been designed to work.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Kimuji

[csr]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

I’m with you on the single Rage idea, I am just thinking that if we get saddled with what’s on test, then Having it affected by other player recharge buffs really needs to be there.

I don't think there is an easy any way to make the power only ignore buffs from others (as opposed to all buffs).  Not that this is in any way a good idea.  It's one set of players with a particular play style (wanting to auto-fire Rage) trying to get that catered to at a cost to everyone else.

 

I also don't get the thinking of this whole line of reasoning.  It's almost as if there are those that think that Rage comes with an auto-fire on it that can't be turned off.

 

In reality, what's on test are two changes:

1. The crash mitigation debuff is now split between Def and Res instead of all Def
2. You can avoid the crash by not stacking Rage

The first is a balance issue, the second a straight buff.

 

Single Rage v stackable crashing Rage is a legitimate discussion, but the idea that this change somehow makes getting +Rech from others worse is non-sense.  You will be no worse off with (2) from above than what is on live.

 

It seems a bit petty to me to want to avoid clicking a power every 2 minutes so much that you are willing to force everyone who doesn't share your preferences to lose a power buff.

Edited September 13, 2019 by csr

[Myrmidon]

40 minutes ago, csr said:

I don't think there is an easy any way to make the power only ignore buffs from others (as opposed to all buffs).  Not that this is in any way a good idea.  It's one set of players with a particular play style (wanting to auto-fire Rage) trying to get that catered to at a cost to everyone else.

 

I also don't get the thinking of this whole line of reasoning.  It's almost as if there are those that think that Rage comes with an auto-fire on it that can't be turned off.

 

In reality, what's on test are two changes:

1. The crash mitigation debuff is now split between Def and Res instead of all Def
2. You can avoid the crash by not stacking Rage

The first is a balance issue, the second a straight buff.

 

Single Rage v stackable crashing Rage is a legitimate discussion, but the idea that this change somehow makes getting +Rech from others worse is non-sense.  You will be no worse off with (2) from above than what is on live.

 

It seems a bit petty to me to want to avoid clicking a power every 2 minutes so much that you are willing to force everyone who doesn't share your preferences to lose a power buff.

It would have to be a Null the Gull option to actually work, I am thinking, so the people that need their Stacking fix would still be unaffected, no worries.

[DMW45]

44 minutes ago, csr said:

I don't think there is an easy any way to make the power only ignore buffs from others (as opposed to all buffs).  Not that this is in any way a good idea.  It's one set of players with a particular play style (wanting to auto-fire Rage) trying to get that catered to at a cost to everyone else.

 

I also don't get the thinking of this whole line of reasoning.  It's almost as if there are those that think that Rage comes with an auto-fire on it that can't be turned off.

 

In reality, what's on test are two changes:

1. The crash mitigation debuff is now split between Def and Res instead of all Def
2. You can avoid the crash by not stacking Rage

The first is a balance issue, the second a straight buff.

 

Single Rage v stackable crashing Rage is a legitimate discussion, but the idea that this change somehow makes getting +Rech from others worse is non-sense.  You will be no worse off with (2) from above than what is on live.

 

It seems a bit petty to me to want to avoid clicking a power every 2 minutes so much that you are willing to force everyone who doesn't share your preferences to lose a power buff.

The second is an annoyance test.  I don't want to have to pay attention to Rage while fighting an AV and adds and whatnot and get penalized because *oops* I pressed Rage two seconds too early.

 

It's usability/user friendliness vs min-max.

 

I put the question back to you,

 

Why sacrifice user friendliness because people wanna min-max?

[csr]

7 minutes ago, DMW45 said:

The second is an annoyance test.  I don't want to have to pay attention to Rage while fighting an AV and adds and whatnot and get penalized because *oops* I pressed Rage two seconds too early.

 

It's usability/user friendliness vs min-max.

 

I put the question back to you,

 

Why sacrifice user friendliness because people wanna min-max?

Because the latter is the status quo, while the former is a significant change.

 

EDIT:

 

Besides, to me, the use friendliness is pretty minor.  I can manage when to click Rage without any major thought or effort.  So I find it a trivial QoL improvement at a real loss of choice and flexibility.

 

Also, what are you doing now to avoid the crash?  Not use Rage at all?

Edited September 13, 2019 by csr

[Haijinx]

15 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

It would have to be a Null the Gull option to actually work, I am thinking, so the people that need their Stacking fix would still be unaffected, no worries.

Would be even cooler if you could just turn stacking on or off with Null the Gull

 

 

[Haijinx]

Or even add a proc that allows stacking (or disallows it) kind of like the new quick snipe proc.

 

 

[HelenCarnate]

Can we reverse the highlight circle?  With the power highlighted it normally means "Click me now" but in this case it would be more of a benefit if rage was not highlighted unless there was currently no rage going.

[siolfir]

48 minutes ago, csr said:

Also, what are you doing now to avoid the crash?  Not use Rage at all?

Yes.

 

It's only still on my build because I switched to a different Brute, using a different primary, rather than respec to get Tactics to keep the +to-hit and spread the end cost out as a toggle.

 

Also, in response to the "the end crash goes away because the patch also gives extra endrance" post that I forgot to multiquote, keep in mind that only Tankers are getting the extra endurance, and there is another AT that has the powerset. One that gets less use out of it proportionally anyway due to a lower base damage and already having a reliable +damage.

Edited September 14, 2019 by siolfir
moving quotation mark

[Placta]

1 hour ago, csr said:

Also, what are you doing now to avoid the crash?  Not use Rage at all?

I haven't even recreated my Inv/SS tanker from Live because of way the crash is now. The proposed change doesn't make me want to, either.

[Haijinx]

You know it wouldn't be out of line to give brutes the 20 extra end too.

 

Or maybe 10

 

They use all the same sets as tanks after all. 

 

Ah well, might have soothed some brute's nerves over the tanker dmg increase.

 

 

[Captain Citadel]

Putting in an option to remove the effect of recharge buffs from other players isn't going to fix my build. But changing the functionality of Rage to offer less potent buffs on a permanent duration would be a nice compromise. If double-stacking is so bad, then don't let Rage stack. The thing I hate about Rage currently is the damage debuff.

[csr]

12 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

You know it wouldn't be out of line to give brutes the 20 extra end too.

 

Or maybe 10

 

They use all the same sets as tanks after all. 

 

Ah well, might have soothed some brute's nerves over the tanker dmg increase.

 

 

Yeah, Brutes really need a buff.  (That's sardonicism, in case anyone thought I was serious.)

 

The END boost was given with the idea that Tankers take longer to kill stuff than Brutes and so use more END.  This is particularly true at lower levels and in solo play.  I see it more of a sop to help get people past the doldrums of leveling a Tanker.

[Haijinx]

Doubt it would matter much at high level for either tanks or brutes tbh.

[Myrmidon]

24 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

You know it wouldn't be out of line to give brutes the 20 extra end too.

 

Or maybe 10

 

They use all the same sets as tanks after all. 

 

Ah well, might have soothed some brute's nerves over the tanker dmg increase.

 

 

Truth be told, I think the End grant should be an “All AT, No AT” equation, however, it’s now the sole thing that I would outright drop after testing with the Tier 1-2 power change.

[DMW45]

You want Rage to be a thing where you have to pay attention, that doesn't punish people for having too much recharge?

 

Make it a toggle--a toggle like hybrid, has no effect on its own, but gives SS's attacks a high chance or perhaps guaranteed proc for something like +20 dam and +5 to-hit that's a 30s duration and stacks up to 8x.  But also, while the toggle itself is fairly expensive, have it make attacks more expensive as well.  Give people incentive to keep attacking and not let up, but if they ever run out of end and the toggle shuts off--full crash.  Dam debuff, def debuff, res debuff, the works--punish them for not paying attention to end and focusing too much on rage.

 

This way you can still get the benefits of rage--even stacking it--where it actually punishes you for not paying attention to things you need to, rather than whether or not a buff has expired.

Edited September 14, 2019 by DMW45

[Cawshun]

8 hours ago, csr said:

To perma double stack Rage you need it to recharge in 58.68s (one half the 120s buff duration minus the ArcanaTime Cast of 1.32s).  That's 240/58.68 = 409% total recharge.  Meaning 309% total +Rech.  Let's assume perma-Hasten and drop that to a rounded 240%.  That means you need something along the lines of fully recharge slotted Rage plus Spiritual or Agility Incarnate and another 125% or so global recharge to perma double stack Rage.  If you're using Musculature (or another Alpha that doesn't buff Recharge) instead you need more along the lines of 140% global recharge.  That's 5 LotGs, 5 Purple sets and another 52.5%.  That's a huge investment.  And with that you calculated a 41% improvement of your damage buff.

 

Let's look at the DPS improvement now.  Say you have perma double stack, 313.5% Damage from slotting (I've assumed Musculature is nowhere to be seen), the initial Rage stack, and the other 38.5% buff.  So by stacking you're getting 11/12ths 78% as a buff (you lose some value to the 1.32s cast every 60s instead of every 120s), but you're losing 1/12th of 313.5% from the crash.  That's about 45% of base damage gained.  Or about a 14.5% DPS increase since you were doing 313.5% with a single stack.  That's pretty significant, but it's also for an extreme case that shows double stacking Rage in its best light with a billion-plus INF build and at least T3 Alpha.  At that point in a toon's life, you are likely either farming or on large teams running TFs and Trials.  An increased DPS in the latter context probably isn't significant  In the former?  You can clear a map in about 87% the time a single stacker would.  Given some setup and recycle time, you're probably earning about 10% more INF.

You're right I was calculating the dps change wrong, but you're heavily overestimating the recharge needed for practical perma double stack. For meaningful perma you only would need it to recharge in ~65s, not ~60s. If you cast it at ~60s, you'll be casting rage INTO the crash, not out of it, wasting 10s of rage and the gaussian's proc. ~65 ensures it can be cast at the end of every crash. Also keep in mind that a crash doesn't put you at 0 damage, it floors you to 5%.

I launched the beta and took some actual damage values from abilities against 54 mobs to calculate a semi-accurate dps increase for the character, using 0 rage stacks as a baseline(100%). I did two tests. The first is with Agility/Melee Core, which is how I had the character built originally. That resulted in 134.14% dps with 1 stack, 154.58% average with 2 stacks for 20.44% average increase from double stacking.

To be fair to not stacking, I also tested with Musculature/Assault core for as much +damage% to get diminishing returns more heavily involved. With ageless and FF +rech proc I still had perma-double stack surprisingly, so no changes needed there. That test resulted in 128.85% average increase from one stack, and 140.27% average from two, for a 11.42% dps increase. 

This does not take in to account aspects such as judgement incarnate ignoring damage modifiers, so that's a full strength nuke every other crash. Also I'm a bit lazy and don't really want to compare Assault core vs radial for this, but as radial scales off the initial hit, it will scale better with double stacking. This is also pure solo play again. I'd be curious to test with a kin, but again I'm lazy and that would take time. I think regardless, stacking at the very least has a valuable place in solo damage currently.
 

I realized from this that there is another reason that removing the stacking and just buffing SS numbers would be impractical. Rage buffs all damage (aside from abilities which ignore damage modifiers, of course). So any damaging abilities from a defensive set or from power/ancil/epic pools are buffed as well. The extra build up stack of double rage buffs those as well. It would take an immense amount of tweaking to find the sweet spot where the change wouldn't be a nerf to the kit. Even if that was found, it would still make attacks outside SS feel lackluster in comparison. Perhaps if that was the route people really wanted, rather than buffing just SS numbers, apply a passive damage modifier to rage on top of the activation. That way all powers would be buffed by the change and not just SS. I still think that sort of change would make rage feel a bit boring, though.

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Cawshun said:

I launched the beta and took some actual damage values from abilities against 54 mobs to calculate a semi-accurate dps increase for the character, using 0 rage stacks as a baseline(100%). I did two tests. The first is with Agility/Melee Core, which is how I had the character built originally. That resulted in 134.14% dps with 1 stack, 154.58% average with 2 stacks for 20.44% average increase from double stacking.

To be fair to not stacking, I also tested with Musculature/Assault core for as much +damage% to get diminishing returns more heavily involved. With ageless and FF +rech proc I still had perma-double stack surprisingly, so no changes needed there. That test resulted in 128.85% average increase from one stack, and 140.27% average from two, for a 11.42% dps increase.

 

So, we have to suffer the crash for a damage buff that can easily be obtained with Red inspirations? Interesting how the table turns.

[csr]

1 hour ago, Cawshun said:

You're right I was calculating the dps change wrong, but you're heavily overestimating the recharge needed for practical perma double stack. For meaningful perma you only would need it to recharge in ~65s, not ~60s. If you cast it at ~60s, you'll be casting rage INTO the crash, not out of it, wasting 10s of rage and the gaussian's proc. ~65 ensures it can be cast at the end of every crash. Also keep in mind that a crash doesn't put you at 0 damage, it floors you to 5%.

I launched the beta and took some actual damage values from abilities against 54 mobs to calculate a semi-accurate dps increase for the character, using 0 rage stacks as a baseline(100%). I did two tests. The first is with Agility/Melee Core, which is how I had the character built originally. That resulted in 134.14% dps with 1 stack, 154.58% average with 2 stacks for 20.44% average increase from double stacking.

To be fair to not stacking, I also tested with Musculature/Assault core for as much +damage% to get diminishing returns more heavily involved. With ageless and FF +rech proc I still had perma-double stack surprisingly, so no changes needed there. That test resulted in 128.85% average increase from one stack, and 140.27% average from two, for a 11.42% dps increase. 

This does not take in to account aspects such as judgement incarnate ignoring damage modifiers, so that's a full strength nuke every other crash. Also I'm a bit lazy and don't really want to compare Assault core vs radial for this, but as radial scales off the initial hit, it will scale better with double stacking. This is also pure solo play again. I'd be curious to test with a kin, but again I'm lazy and that would take time. I think regardless, stacking at the very least has a valuable place in solo damage currently.
 

I realized from this that there is another reason that removing the stacking and just buffing SS numbers would be impractical. Rage buffs all damage (aside from abilities which ignore damage modifiers, of course). So any damaging abilities from a defensive set or from power/ancil/epic pools are buffed as well. The extra build up stack of double rage buffs those as well. It would take an immense amount of tweaking to find the sweet spot where the change wouldn't be a nerf to the kit. Even if that was found, it would still make attacks outside SS feel lackluster in comparison. Perhaps if that was the route people really wanted, rather than buffing just SS numbers, apply a passive damage modifier to rage on top of the activation. That way all powers would be buffed by the change and not just SS. I still think that sort of change would make rage feel a bit boring, though.

Your right, I should have been using a 68.68s cycle instead of 58.68s.  I also thought the floor was 10% of base.  I simply ignored it as unimportant given the error bars on the numbers being tossed about.

 

Again, you've used a different stat than I would.  This started as a discussion about the advantage of stackable Rage to min-maxers.  So for the purposes of that discussion I would compare double Rage to single, not to no Rage at all.  That is, just how much value are the so-called min-maxers getting out of stackable Rage?

 

Using that stat your first test would be a 154.58% / 134.14% - 1 = 15.2% increase over single Rage.  Very close to the 14.5% I calculated from your previous numbers and theory, even with the mistake.  The second one shows just an 8.9% increase (140.27% / 128.85% - 1).

 

I still consider these builds outliers and those numbers very close to the optimal best.  And I will reiterate that in my opinion, outside of farming that level of buff isn't really a big deal.  And even in farms it's probably about a 10% increase in INF earnings.  So while that's significant, I don't think it makes stackable Rage a crazily OP thing like, say, Brutes in general.  Now, double stacking without a crash would be a different story.

Edited September 14, 2019 by csr

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Cawshun said:

 

I realized from this that there is another reason that removing the stacking and just buffing SS numbers would be impractical. Rage buffs all damage (aside from abilities which ignore damage modifiers, of course). So any damaging abilities from a defensive set or from power/ancil/epic pools are buffed as well. The extra build up stack of double rage buffs those as well. It would take an immense amount of tweaking to find the sweet spot where the change wouldn't be a nerf to the kit. Even if that was found, it would still make attacks outside SS feel lackluster in comparison. Perhaps if that was the route people really wanted, rather than buffing just SS numbers, apply a passive damage modifier to rage on top of the activation. That way all powers would be buffed by the change and not just SS. I still think that sort of change would make rage feel a bit boring, though.

whoa whoa

 

SS is getting that Rage bonus to Damage abilities outside of SS literally for free. 

 

All the other sets have to get by with inferior +To hit and +Dmg abilities. They don't have buffed Epic pools, etc to compensate for not having Rage.  

 

Balancing things so SS doesn't "lose" this free damage is ridiculous.  

Edited September 14, 2019 by Haijinx

[csr]

16 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

 

So, we have to suffer the crash for a damage buff that can easily be obtained with Red inspirations? Interesting how the table turns.

I started playing an SS Tanker just over 15 years ago.  To me the crash simply belongs there.  And with the current situation your comparing using something you may or may not have to using a little patience and attentiveness to not click the power too soon.  Honestly though, the farmers are probably gobbling all the reds they have anyway, so that stacked Rage advantage is actually less than advertised.

 

To summarize my position:

• I'm OK with the way Rage is on live except for the imbalance of the -Def debuff.  So this version on Pineapple is pretty close to what I would do myself.
• I don't think that stackable Rage is really all that and a bag of chips, so I wouldn't mind all that much if it went away.  I just find catering to those too lazy to take Rage off auto-fire annoying.  I can get crashless Rage with this change if I want it by exercising a tiny bit of patience and attentiveness.
• If we're doing single stack Rage then let's get rid of the click altogether and make it a toggle with an END cost chosen to make most people want to 2 slot it with EndRdx (say 0.4-0.52 E/s).
• Rage should probably be renamed to something that doesn't mean "uncontrolled anger", especially if there is to be no crash.