Scrapper Melee Primary Testing: "Standard" environment

[Gobbledygook]

First, I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this project. It has been very informative, especially the SO only testing. The fact you started from the perspective of how the game should be balanced for the average player vs those who push their builds, myself included. Special shout out to BillZ though. It was your antics on the original that got me to roll two of my favorite toons, a claws/sr scrap and a ss/sr brute.

 

I don't want to derail the thread, but I do have some questions. If asked, I'll happily remove them and start a new thread in the scrapper forums.

 

This has actually made me want to get on Beta myself, though I am having some trouble at the moment.

I was curious if you guys were having any issues either, or if I just don't kmow what the hell I'm doing.

I was also curious if anyone had any experience regarding fire melee vs rad melee vs energy melee (yes, I'm aware scrappers do not have energy melee)? I have a Fm/Inv brute that I luvs, but I have a concept that dictates energy, so I was thinking substitating rad for energy? I know rad has better aoe vs em, but how does the st hold up? And how does it compare vs fm?

One last thing, with all of this wonderful data is anyone planning on making any guides, like back in ye olden days? You know, with power description, breakdowns, detailed info and the like.

 

[Gobbledygook]

Have you guys seen this? It was just posted in the Beta portion of the forums.

Not sure how this woukd effect any of the testing done so far.

 

AE Damage Fix

• Fixed several issues that caused custom critters in Architect Entertainment to deal damage that's inconsistent with their non-custom counterparts
• Generally all enemies were dealing less damage than they should apart from ranged minions, this has now been corrected
• See the tables below for the impact of enemies at level 20, 50, and 54

Level 20	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	-10%	-32%
Elite Boss	No Change	No Change
AV	No Change	No Change

 

Level 50	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	+44%	+8%
Elite Boss	+29%	+8%
AV	+82%	+47%

 

Level 54	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	+51%	+13%
Elite Boss	+29%	+8%
AV	+95%	+58%

 

[Galaxy Brain]

On 3/8/2020 at 5:51 PM, Gobbledygook said:

Have you guys seen this? It was just posted in the Beta portion of the forums.

Not sure how this woukd effect any of the testing done so far.

 

AE Damage Fix

• Fixed several issues that caused custom critters in Architect Entertainment to deal damage that's inconsistent with their non-custom counterparts
• Generally all enemies were dealing less damage than they should apart from ranged minions, this has now been corrected
• See the tables below for the impact of enemies at level 20, 50, and 54

Level 20	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	-10%	-32%
Elite Boss	No Change	No Change
AV	No Change	No Change

 

Level 50	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	+44%	+8%
Elite Boss	+29%	+8%
AV	+82%	+47%

 

Level 54	Melee Damage Change	Ranged Damage Change
Minion	+12%	-4%
Lieutenant	+12%	+1%
Boss	+51%	+13%
Elite Boss	+29%	+8%
AV	+95%	+58%

 

This has been shelved for the moment, but it is def worth looking at for the future.

[Galaxy Brain]

Just to note, the spreadhseet is currently hidden for revisions as I work out a new test map 🙂

[Haijinx]

Bump to help a questioner.

[Galaxy Brain]

Copying from Beta:

 

---

 

(The rules of this test are better described here: )

 

 

Overview & Biases:

The above link will go into a bit more detail, but the goal of this test is to provide benchmark tests for Scrapper Primaries in a more or less neutral environment (no gimmicks, no enemy resists, etc) that aimed to emulate a standard mission experience. This means a 4-floor defeat-all mission with slight variations to mob placement, size, and level room to room as well as a mix of enemy ranks with a mandatory defeat of 2 boss spawns and a final elite boss spawn.

 

With /Willpower and no pools/epics besides Combat Jumping (for the SO test, IO's had hasten), the enemies and difficulty setting were just enough to get "Safety" as a metric as many sets have clear design intention of trading damage for utility or mitigation, or vice versa, and allowing myself to actually experience or mitigate damage I felt is a worthy point of interest. Given this is an "everyday" sort of benchmark, ignoring the impact that Ice Melee's safety provides I feel would be unjust compared to if I just made myself invincible and went  to town to track raw output. Likewise, a set like Fire Melee really showed where it can struggle if it's not constantly killing.

 

This test has less mobs than a farm, but more to deal with than a Pylon, so results may vary wildly from the expectations provided by those popular trials. Both of those I feel do not provide a full picture between the mix of AoE and ST output, favoring the extremes on either end. The office map simulation just as well does not highlight certain sets in the way you'd expect either. Something like the new Energy Melee may massacre Pylons but end up on the low/mediocre end here or vice versa with other sets.

 

I hope you find the following enlightening in some ways, and let the results speak for themselves when it comes to the changes to multiple melee sets we see here in Beta.

 

---

 

 

 

Results on SO's only:

All sets were played with a SO build with /Willpower as a secondary and no pool powers/epics except Combat Jumping, in order to isolate the primary set as much as possible.

 

(except for Claws and Kinetic Melee which were given Overwhelming KD IO's + a lvl 50 damage IO to have the same slotting + knockdown on their ranged cones. These were ran due to the incredibly common practice of slotting for KD, and only 2 melee sets actually "needing" it.)

 

 

Results without the IO in Claws can be seen here:

Spoiler

 

As you can see by some of the names, we have been testing these changes internally for quite a while now to make sure things land in the desired spot!

 

Breaking down this chart, each column represents a different aspect:

• AVG = the average clear time of the mission from all 10 runs (minutes : seconds : milliseconds)
• SWING = How far away from the Total Average the set performed
• SD Deviation = Standard Deviation from run to run, measuring how consistently each set performed despite the 10 runs having slightly different mob formations and placements
• BEST TIME = the best run time of the set, shows the max potential
• WORST TIME = the worst run time of the set, shows the minimum potential
• SAFETY = This counts the number of deaths in the 10 runs. A score of 0.50 means that I took substantial damage but never died, a 0.00 means I was practically invincible!
• SAFETY ADJ = Each point in the Safety column is multiplied by 20 seconds, and then added to the average to show an Adjusted Safety Average.

 

With those all factored in, we can rank the sets against each other on more than just the average clear time:

 

 

From left to right, we have the results with Claws KD, Claws "Pure", and the average between the two. 

 

 

 

Now, lets see how this changes when we jump to an IO build:

 

Results on a "Mid Level" IO Build:

All sets were played with a n IO build with no purples, winter sets, or "special" procs beyond a single Damage Proc like Mako's or Obliteration that *any* Melee attack could slot. 

All sets achieved 72.5% global recharge (142.5% most of the time with Hasten up, only a 20s cooldown there). 

All sets had the normal uniques like Numina, Kismet, etc slotted

All sets ran the tests at +3/x5 difficulty

 

 

With recharge and procs thrown into the mix, the top sets become a LOT closer in clear times, and safety really isn't a concern outside of Energy Melee where rapid ET's kinda hurt lol.

 

Like above, lets see how all the factors weigh in:

 

 

The margins are so close for the "top tier"  that with more than 10 tests a piece I'm sure they'd all be near dead even! 

 

 

Combined Results:

 

 

 

[brasilgringo]

So the upshot is Titan Weapons weren't nerfed as much as expected and remain a top-tier set, though perhaps more closely tied with other top-tier sets and actually behind Claws?  I had trouble understanding exactly what they changed about TW -- did they get rid of the fast-cast momentum mechanic entirely or just lower the damage and reduce some of the AOEs?

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, brasilgringo said:

So the upshot is Titan Weapons weren't nerfed as much as expected and remain a top-tier set, though perhaps more closely tied with other top-tier sets and actually behind Claws?  I had trouble understanding exactly what they changed about TW -- did they get rid of the fast-cast momentum mechanic entirely or just lower the damage and reduce some of the AOEs?

The gist of the changes are:

 

1) TW randomly did more damage per power than similar attacks by about ~10%, this was removed so the powers behave like other attacks with the damage formulas.

 

2) While you have momentum, your TW powers deal 25% less base damage, but they also have 25% faster base recharge and cost about 50% less endurance!

 

3) Huge change: Momentum no longer requires you to actually hit a target.

 

 

This ends up being like... a sideways nerf. I say that because it is a strict downgrade from what it was prior (which was ridiculous), but it was also buffed in major, major ways with Momentum being 100% guaranteed if you activate a power and the extreme end discount and base recharge boost of your attacks when you have momentum. As shown, it still retains a ton of it's strengths outside the absurd DPS it had prior while still pumping out great numbers.

 

Something anecdotal that I didn't touch on was that I was able to handle much tougher spawns than most other sets with TW. Despite a few sets having faster results, I separately ran a test of 3 even con bosses vs War Mace and TW on the SO builds and only one of those sets could consistently actually win.

[brasilgringo]

4 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

The gist of the changes are:

 

1) TW randomly did more damage per power than similar attacks by about ~10%, this was removed so the powers behave like other attacks with the damage formulas.

 

2) While you have momentum, your TW powers deal 25% less base damage, but they also have 25% faster base recharge and cost about 50% less endurance!

 

3) Huge change: Momentum no longer requires you to actually hit a target.

 

 

This ends up being like... a sideways nerf. I say that because it is a strict downgrade from what it was prior (which was ridiculous), but it was also buffed in major, major ways with Momentum being 100% guaranteed if you activate a power and the extreme end discount and base recharge boost of your attacks when you have momentum. As shown, it still retains a ton of it's strengths outside the absurd DPS it had prior while still pumping out great numbers.

 

Something anecdotal that I didn't touch on was that I was able to handle much tougher spawns than most other sets with TW. Despite a few sets having faster results, I separately ran a test of 3 even con bosses vs War Mace and TW on the SO builds and only one of those sets could consistently actually win.

Thanks for the detailed response, GB.  Could finally be time for me to make that TW/Bio that's been gnawing at my alt-itis for a while ... 

[InvaderStych]

@Galaxy Brain

 

I might have missed it someplace in the thread, but are the testers sharing the chains/powers in use for testing?  Curious if Savage melee includes using Hemm?

[Galaxy Brain]

Hemm was included on SOs,  but chains aren't really discussed as there's really only the EB to use it on.

[Galaxy Brain]

Like I did with Blasters, I realized I could make myself invincible in AE and just go to town on a x8 mission on just plain old SO's in order to gauge the effectiveness within a saturated team environment, under the assumption that safety is "off" given there are support characters there to mitigate the heat and let you cut loose.

 

The following was at +0/x8 on a plain SO build for each (except Claws and KM which had the same enhancement values as 3dam/1acc/1end/1rech with a KD proc)

 

 

 

 

S+ / S TIER: RAD MELEE - SPINES / CLAWS / WAR MACE

So, Rad Melee being *that* good was a surprise, but I think it was a combo of it's -Def mattering at the SO level vs +1's over time, and it having a slightly better time fighting multiple bosses compared to Spines. Both of them just delete waves of Minions and LT's, but Spines slowed down a bit when it came to ST DPS on the boss or two in each spawn at x8.

 

Claws and War Mace are basically tied with only a few seconds between meaning there is wiggle room of like a few missed attacks here or there, and are just both incredibly solid sets that just happen to not buzzsaw through hoards as effectively as Rad or Spines.

 

A TIER: SAVAGE MELEE / ELEC MELEE

Two great performers that simply lacked a little somethin compared to S tier sets. Savage in particular had a little bit of a slower approach to AoE despite being able to shred a single target up, and on the other side of the coin Elec Melee had great AoE but worse ST. Both great, but the 4 sets above them outperformed them in the same sort of styles.

 

B TIER: TITAN WEAPONS / KATANA

I'll start with Katana as it is in B tier for pretty much the same reason as Savage/Elec, it is a very solid set but it just lacks that extra oomph to match the top tiers.

 

Titan Weapons is probably a shock to see down here, but it makes sense. TW has a lot of AoE's, but most of them only hit 5 targets at a time while most of the top tier's AoEs hit 10 at a time (or more in Rad's case), so even if TW is deleting everything it hits, it can only hit so many at a time which leads to more cycles to clear a mob. Without a secondary to further enhance DPS, the set by itself offers above average output, but not the best (especially if we are ignoring safety/etc).

 

C TIER: BATTLE AXE / STAFF FIGHTING / DUAL BLADES / ICE MELEE / DARK MELEE

Most of the sets here just end up being "worse" versions of other sets in this category:

• Battle Axe is really just bad War Mace. The Lack of Clobber or Shatter on the set really shows here
• Staff is decent, but sort of trades raw output for versatility and utility and it shows here
• Dual Blades is a good set, but it is inconsistent when trying to shred through as many people as possible. To me, I feel if combos just "worked" even on miss like TW's momentum (like as long as you land the finisher + activate the powers it works) it would be a much better performer with Attack Vitals. Until then, random misses and such cost valuable time cycle after cycle.
• Ice Melee performs pretty well considering it does trade a lot of output for safety, with Safety not being needed though it's flaws show. Good AoE but ST feels a little slow.
• Dark Melee has great potential, but in this vacuum the nature of it's AoEs sort of has the TW problem of being hard to hit as many targets as you'd like, as well as the issue of being slow to apply the total damage.

 

D TIER: ENERGY MELEE / MARTIAL ARTS / FIERY MELEE

This tier has two sets that are ST specialists, so it's no surprise that in the x8 test they'd be lower... but it's concerning seeing Fiery Melee down here. The whole set is themed around "f it, just all offense!" but.... even when you are set to be invincible it is not topping the charts like Fire Blast is on Blasters by itself. The AoE is either slow with it's longish cooldown, or too narrow to utilize well even when you got tons of targets. The ST was also kind of slow with DoT's or GFS's animation... it just really lacks the oomph you'd expect.

 

E TIER: PSY MELEE / BROADSWORD / STREET JUSTICE

Below D tier, we get some sets that seem like they may just need IO love to really work... and Broadsword. Like Battle Axe, BS is just strictly inferior Katana, not much else to say there!

 

Psy Melee and StJ both felt underwhelming despite having a kind of similar design where they can boost key attacks for astounding output, but not really...? Starting with Psy, I found when it worked it works well enough, but without Insight active either through RNG or the lockout period it honestly felt super average, and with a smallish cone + slow PBAoE for mob clearing it ending up being rather sluggish at x8. Greater Psy Blade also feels bad compared to Energy Transfer now given that with ET you can guarantee you get the "Good one" constantly, and EM ended up above Psy. Likewise, StJ's AoEs are both pretty tiny and despite recharging quickly, spamming them interferes with combo setups that you want to use vs Bosses and the like which leads to very poor mob clearing. Wrecking bosses also did not feel as spectacular as it should have, but perhaps both these sets shine brighter with more procs/etc.

 

F TIER: KINETIC MELEE

No surprise here, KM is just slow as molasses to "work" where you gotta build up 5 hits to unleash good damage, on top of the longer cooldown of Energy Siphon... and yeah, its a mess.

 

[PainX]

very discouraging to see so many sets below B tier not that i consider most of the C tier sets bad but katana is like a golden standard to me not super insane but feels so good to play the set that neither felt OP nor weak just smooth dps cool animations and such a good mix

[hejtmane]

I like to reply about fire to understand I played a lot of fire attack on live my main became my fire/shield I also got a fire/reg to 35 and before incarnates when we first started the pylon test I was top 10 with fire shield; I currently have a fire/rad retired for katana/rad like that paring better but now working on fire/wp. Here is the thing I learned palying all that fire attack and leveling.  Breath of fire is terrible so it is worthless and does not help with aoe I tried to make it work maneuvering my toon to maximize the cone yep better off taking scorch.  The other thing I learned with the dots you need to switch targets a lot to leverage the dots and speed up taking out groups while you cycle in  fire circle sword.

 

The only thing i can come up with to help fire is Fix Fire Breath to make it's aoe better  and reduced the dots on the attacks for scorch and incinerate and give them the midnight grasp treatment a  base damage with some extra dot damage.

 

[Sovera]

As I said somewhere else Fire Melee will never take a full rework to be 'good' because Fiery Embrace from Fire Armor exists. Boosting damage by 100% for 20 seconds will always be lurking in the background. FE needs either to disappear or be reworked so that what it does for non-Fire sets is what it does for Fire damage, AKA add a percentage of extra damage.

 

As everyone has pointed over and over Fire Melee is just bad at the moment. It needs a complete rework. Shorter DoTs, MORE damage since it has zero utility, defensive value, or even places to slot -res procs. And it needs to have the animations trimmed down.

 

I saw that the set was being tweaked several months back but the changes were discarded. I did not get to see what the changes were though, but hopefully instead of gimmicks it was based on a solid foundation.

[Haijinx]

That's an interesting point about Fiery Embrace.  Its a fairly bad armor set though, maybe just let it stay and fix Fire Melee anyhow.

[PainX]

well i would say my fire/shield scrapper dont really care much what they do about FE not my business you want to balance around that put it in fire melee

[Frosticus]

 

Fiery Embrace was changed some time back. 

It is fairly primary agnostic now and provides a 20 second fire proc to most damaging powers.

 

I don't believe that fire melee has any special interaction with it anymore (pve).

 

An em/fa scrapper is bonkers from a burst damage perspective. 

[hejtmane]

4 hours ago, PainX said:

well i would say my fire/shield scrapper dont really care much what they do about FE not my business you want to balance around that put it in fire melee

 

22 hours ago, Sovera said:

As I said somewhere else Fire Melee will never take a full rework to be 'good' because Fiery Embrace from Fire Armor exists. Boosting damage by 100% for 20 seconds will always be lurking in the background. FE needs either to disappear or be reworked so that what it does for non-Fire sets is what it does for Fire damage, AKA add a percentage of extra damage.

 

As everyone has pointed over and over Fire Melee is just bad at the moment. It needs a complete rework. Shorter DoTs, MORE damage since it has zero utility, defensive value, or even places to slot -res procs. And it needs to have the animations trimmed down.

 

I saw that the set was being tweaked several months back but the changes were discarded. I did not get to see what the changes were though, but hopefully instead of gimmicks it was based on a solid foundation.

I don't think FE is holding Fire Melee back from being fixed. Fire Armor on scrappers is trash and is probably the worse armor set we have available to scrappers. Shield is superior and it buffs fire melee really while  so FE  is irrelevant imo to any conversation on fixing fire melee.

 

My first wish for fire melee is Fire Breath to be usable just because of how cool it is but the cone is so narrow and animation time so long for so little results. This from a person who tried to make it worked because he use to be able to do the old triangle on the original shadow maul and hit three targets.

[Sovera]

18 minutes ago, hejtmane said:

 

I don't think FE is holding Fire Melee back from being fixed. Fire Armor on scrappers is trash and is probably the worse armor set we have available to scrappers. Shield is superior and it buffs fire melee really while  so FE  is irrelevant imo to any conversation on fixing fire melee.

 

My first wish for fire melee is Fire Breath to be usable just because of how cool it is but the cone is so narrow and animation time so long for so little results. This from a person who tried to make it worked because he use to be able to do the old triangle on the original shadow maul and hit three targets.

I suppose that we will only know when one of the god devs chimes in. But I'm sticking with the 100% damage boost lasting 20 seconds with roughly 30 seconds downtime as the culprit. My Fire/Claws Tanker has it down to 53 seconds cooldown, this not considering the FF procs shortening it a bit further.

 

Stalker and Scrapper have the bad Fire Armor, but Brute and Tanker do not.

[Frosticus]

4 minutes ago, Sovera said:

I suppose that we will only know when one of the god devs chimes in. But I'm sticking with the 100% damage boost lasting 20 seconds with roughly 30 seconds downtime as the culprit. My Fire/Claws Tanker has it down to 53 seconds cooldown, this not considering the FF procs shortening it a bit further.

 

Stalker and Scrapper have the bad Fire Armor, but Brute and Tanker do not.

You can stick with it, but that isn't what FE does.

[Sovera]

6 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

You can stick with it, but that isn't what FE does.

What isn't?

[Galaxy Brain]

10 minutes ago, Sovera said:

I suppose that we will only know when one of the god devs chimes in. But I'm sticking with the 100% damage boost lasting 20 seconds with roughly 30 seconds downtime as the culprit. My Fire/Claws Tanker has it down to 53 seconds cooldown, this not considering the FF procs shortening it a bit further.

 

Stalker and Scrapper have the bad Fire Armor, but Brute and Tanker do not.

I highly doubt that is the reason why FM isn't touched. Even with that, it still would not be as good as other sets due to the drawbacks of Fiery Aura.... plus as mentioned FE is probably even better with the sets that have better base performance in total that Fiery Melee.

[Frosticus]

5 minutes ago, Sovera said:

What isn't?

it doesn't provide a +100% damage buff to fire for 20 seconds.

It flags a fire proc to most damaging powers for 20 seconds. Like I said above it is largely agnostic when it comes to your damage dealing primary (secondary for tanker). 

 

FE has no special interaction with fire melee in pve.

 

Stalker fire armor is not great, but if more people understood FE they'd feel a bit better about scrapper fire armor. It is perfectly hardy with a few team buffs and does WAY more damage than other secondaries in such scenarios.

[Sovera]

13 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

it doesn't provide a +100% damage buff to fire for 20 seconds.

It flags a fire proc to most damaging powers for 20 seconds. Like I said above it is largely agnostic when it comes to your damage dealing primary (secondary for tanker). 

 

FE has no special interaction with fire melee in pve.

 

Stalker fire armor is not great, but if more people understood FE they'd feel a bit better about scrapper fire armor. It is perfectly hardy with a few team buffs and does WAY more damage than other secondaries in such scenarios.

*goes to check*

 

Well, blimey. You're right. It was changed in Issue 18. While it does more for fire attacks than non-fire I'm not actually sure of how much it translates to.

 

Welp, while it should still influence things it's not as much a buff as I thought. Apologies for the misinformation spread on my side of the conversation.