Remind me why they don't want an Assault-primary AT?

[Menelruin]

I remember there was some explanation for it posted, other than just "how would it distinguish its role compared to other DPS classes?", but can't remember what it was.....

[Alchemystic]

they were too busy working on doomed archetypes like Primalist instead.

 

That being said, it would sure make a change to the Melee/Support concept that pops up here every week or so, so I'm all for Assault (or Manipulation) being used in favor of Melee.

 

I think Assault/Armor and Manipulation/Support are two concepts I would definitely like to see explored more.

[Leogunner]

My perspective: these specialty sets are made for that AT.  They were designed with that AT in mind thus they don't fall into the same theme usage as more basic concepts like Ranged Blast and Armor and even those aren't all 1-for-1 adaptations.

 

If a new AT is created, I'd much rather they have a custom specialty set made for their role.  So to me, you asking why there's no Assault Primary is like asking why there's no Pet Secondary.  Not saying there can't be an AT that utilizes a mix of ranged and melee or whatever hodge-podge recipe manipulation sets use, but the hypothetical AT suggestion likely would benefit from making their own blend.

[Alchemystic]

1 minute ago, Leogunner said:

My perspective: these specialty sets are made for that AT.  They were designed with that AT in mind thus they don't fall into the same theme usage as more basic concepts like Ranged Blast and Armor and even those aren't all 1-for-1 adaptations.

 

If a new AT is created, I'd much rather they have a custom specialty set made for their role.  So to me, you asking why there's no Assault Primary is like asking why there's no Pet Secondary.  Not saying there can't be an AT that utilizes a mix of ranged and melee or whatever hodge-podge recipe manipulation sets use, but the hypothetical AT suggestion likely would benefit from making their own blend.

Assault was actually being experimented with for another Archetype called 'Guardian', however, development speed came to a grinding halt as the archetype's unique 'composition' secondary (a mixture of armor and support powers) proved too difficult to work with.

 

I think reusing existing powerset types is likely the best way to go.

 

And yes, that includes pets! (Control/Pets maybe?)

[Leogunner]

29 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

Assault was actually being experimented with for another Archetype called 'Guardian', however, development speed came to a grinding halt as the archetype's unique 'composition' secondary (a mixture of armor and support powers) proved too difficult to work with.

 

I think reusing existing powerset types is likely the best way to go.

 

And yes, that includes pets! (Control/Pets maybe?)

If anything, that's just an example why a powerset should conform to the AT's design needs rather than trying to merely reuse powersets types.  The way you describe it makes it sounds like the "composition" secondary is at fault when it could also be that the assault sets ported with their power build ups, AoE -regen and its capability to adapt to be both ranged and melee while having armor would make the overall product of both sets contribute to the problem.

 

I'm sure that Guardian AT would be a hassle to balance too.  It's mixing way too many branches into one AT that isn't an epic AT.  Think about it: ranged damage, melee damage, armor and support that likely lends itself to mass control via stuff like slow patches, mass AoE KD, etc.  Lol it's why when I suggested a support/melee AT, I think limiting it to strictly melee is a must unless it's defenses are also rather paper thing...then Assault type set mixes might work easier for balance.

[Alchemystic]

Guardians were intended to be a jack of all trades, but funnily enough the Assault sets were the only successful part of it.

 

They weren't a simple copy/paste job from Dominators. Powers were shuffled around or outright replaced in order to create an archetype where Assault powersets would be a viable means of damage output. The 'Composition' powersets had quite a few issues with them; endurance management, reduced survivability, poor coordination...  The same issues I think a pure Melee/Support archetype would face.

 

I think if there ever was an Assault/Armor archetype, it would have to have an inherent power that defines it enough to separate it from its competition; scrappers and sentinels. I think perhaps something that encourages the player to swap between ranged and melee, perhaps this;

 

When above 50% health, you gain an endurance discount and damage buff on melee attacks. When below 50% health, gain an endurance discount and damage buff on ranged attacks.

 

I was also thinking something for a Manipulation/Support archetype;

 

When you apply a buff or debuff, you generate charge towards a 'power boost'  effect

Edited January 25, 2020 by Tyrannical

[Steampunkette]

The issue, there, is that the game makes no distinction of "Ranged" or "Melee" when it comes to damage bonuses, Tyrannical.

 

And even if it did, you'd be pushing people into a single playstyle, regardless of powersets chosen. Rush in, bounce out, rush in, bounce out.

 

The big problem of Composition as a powerset concept is that you need to continually provide buffs and heals. Which means a significant portion of your damage-dealing time is consumed not dealing damage. Further, most "Composition" powersets were team-oriented, meaning you lost survivability in order to buff your allies.

 

For a "Good" balance, the non-armor benefits of the secondary need to both deal some small measure of damage -and- benefit the Guardian (Or whatever name you give this assault-primary archetype). Which is why I have always, and will always, suggest that the defensive secondary include Armor powers and Control powers. Relative and Absolute Mitigation combined.

 

Toss a hold on the Lieutenant and then rely on your armor to keep the minions and boss from killing you while you tear 'em up with Assault powers. Confuse a minion or two to help you dish out damage before they die. Something that supports you, solo, -and- helps teams.

 

Useless against AVs, though. 

[Alchemystic]

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

The issue, there, is that the game makes no distinction of "Ranged" or "Melee" when it comes to damage bonuses, Tyrannical.

You're aware that each archetype has different damage modifiers for ranged, melee, and so on? it's all in the patch notes.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Tyrannical

[Leogunner]

1 hour ago, Tyrannical said:

Guardians were intended to be a jack of all trades, but funnily enough the Assault sets were the only successful part of it.

 

They weren't a simple copy/paste job from Dominators. Powers were shuffled around or outright replaced in order to create an archetype where Assault powersets would be a viable means of damage output. The 'Composition' powersets had quite a few issues with them; endurance management, reduced survivability, poor coordination...  The same issues I think a pure Melee/Support archetype would face.

 

I think if there ever was an Assault/Armor archetype, it would have to have an inherent power that defines it enough to separate it from its competition; scrappers and sentinels. I think perhaps something that encourages the player to swap between ranged and melee, perhaps this;

 

When above 50% health, you gain an endurance discount and damage buff on melee attacks. When below 50% health, gain an endurance discount and damage buff on ranged attacks.

 

I was also thinking something for a Manipulation/Support archetype;

 

When you apply a buff or debuff, you generate charge towards a 'power boost'  effect

It's hard to mess up damage, though.  If we're being frank, most DPS melees (Tanker, Brute, Scrapper and Stalker) can have a mix of melee and ranged using EPPs.

 

I never got a chance to put my hands on Guardian but balancing the armor vs the support shouldn't be too touch if you just sacrifice some of the mainstays for armor.  Think Tarpatch for mez protection and fearsome stare for cloak of fear.  If you do that, you can actually give something decent buff/debuff capabilities on par with Defender...but if they don't have the actual buffs/debuffs to min/max them, you can at least utilize the lesser buffs/debuffs to aid yourself/your team.

 

As for the suggestion, I don't like it.  Probably the 1 in 1000 scenario where I agree with @Steampunkette but binding it by range has been shown to be buggy with the whole Feral Charge (is that the one in Savage Melee) that gauges damage by range.  The game doesn't differentiate damage by range unless it's using some special tech and even then, it'll bug out like how that teleport AoE does no damage if done outside of a certain range.

 

If I were making an Assault/Armor AT, i'd probably limit it to only have weak ranged attacks (like the tier 1, tier 3 and the TAoE) and then making an inherent that specifically charges up your ranged powers by using your melee.  Without it, you'll be doing piddly range-wise but with it, you'll be as strong as melee.

 

Rather than trying to make it shine in various respects, just focus on what its concept should be able to achieve.  Making something a jack-of-all just means it'll be decently great at everything, making people feel obligated to play it vs other things or just suck at everything so few people play it.

[Alchemystic]

4 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

 

 

If I were making an Assault/Armor AT, i'd probably limit it to only have weak ranged attacks (like the tier 1, tier 3 and the TAoE) and then making an inherent that specifically charges up your ranged powers by using your melee.  Without it, you'll be doing piddly range-wise but with it, you'll be as strong as melee.

 

Perhaps the other way around? using ranged attacks to charge up your melee, since I think that would be more suitable.

[Leogunner]

6 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

Perhaps the other way around? using ranged attacks to charge up your melee, since I think that would be more suitable.

But I want the AT to put themselves out there to get a benefit and since the set wouldn't have things like the snipe or strong range + utility blast, you'd want to use melee and resort to range when you need it.

 

Blaster already covers using ranged and them coming into melee for the kill.

[biostem]

What would be interesting would be an AT whose inherent performed differently based upon their proximity to the enemy.  For instance, imagine if you gained better defenses the closer you were to an enemy, by better damage the further away you were from them...

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Tyrannical said:

You're aware that each archetype has different damage modifiers for ranged, melee, and so on? it's all in the patch notes.

ATs have always had Ranged and Melee Damage Scalars. They're core to class function.

 

But there's no way to alter those values on the fly through power functions or anything. They're the basic modifiers that ATs use when interacting not only with their own powers, but pool powers and ancillary powers.

[Lines]

To my knowledge, those scalars don't actually exist in the game as a variable in of themselves. The individual power values are just set according to them.

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Lines said:

To my knowledge, those scalars don't actually exist in the game as a variable in of themselves. The individual power values are just set according to them.

More or less... They're baked into the Archetypes, themselves, and apply a multiplier to the base damage of a given power.

 

With no modifiers, Fire Blast at level 1 does 8.3 damage. For a blaster (1.125 ranged scalar) it becomes 9.33. For a Tanker (0.75 value) it would deal 6.22 damage.

 

But because it's a primary AT Attribute, it cannot be altered by the game's engine on the fly. At least not without some serious redesign.

[Alchemystic]

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

More or less... They're baked into the Archetypes, themselves, and apply a multiplier to the base damage of a given power.

 

With no modifiers, Fire Blast at level 1 does 8.3 damage. For a blaster (1.125 ranged scalar) it becomes 9.33. For a Tanker (0.75 value) it would deal 6.22 damage.

 

But because it's a primary AT Attribute, it cannot be altered by the game's engine on the fly. At least not without some serious redesign.

I was not aware of that, my mistake

[Steampunkette]

5 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

I was not aware of that, my mistake

Totally cool! Thank you for taking the time to understand. Increased knowledge is -great-! 

[Captain Powerhouse]

There was a shelved AT called the Striker, it was supposed to have a primary set that would be pretty much Assault-Like and a secondary that would be similar to Blaster Manipulation sets (with armor powers instead of melee attacks)

 

One of the big gimicks of the AT is that Melee attacks would be empowered by stacking buffs generated using ranged attacks from range. If you ever played Final Fantasy XIV, the AT would play VERY similar to Red Mages, only no black/white balance. Instead just build up the meter, and use it as a secondary power source to turn those melee strikes into extremely powerful attacks.

 

For the most part the AT would be playing a DPS role with some hard crowd control on their secondary and some team support on their epics.

 

It is a concept I still hope to realize at some point. If it was to happen, it would very likely start with just 3 or 4 primary and secondary sets, at least at first. Getting sentinels out the door was ridiculously hard, and it still needs lots of work.

Edited January 26, 2020 by Captain Powerhouse

[Replacement]

9 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

It is a concept I still hope to realize at some point. If it was to happen, it would very likely start with just 3 or 4 primary and secondary sets, at least at first. Getting sentinels out the door was ridiculously hard, and it still needs lots of work.

Mastermind launched with 4 primaries, got a 5th the next issue, and a 6th set 11 issues and 4 years later.

 

I think we'd be happy with 4x4 set options to launch with for any theoretical new AT. 

 

And I'd say a single primary and secondary for testing, but that might generate the wrong kind of hype to have it in the test server that long.

 

Anyway, thanks for the insight. This has me a lot more hopeful about the direction on this than when it was spoken of in the past.

[Alchemystic]

10 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

There was a shelved AT called the Striker, it was supposed to have a primary set that would be pretty much Assault-Like and a secondary that would be similar to Blaster Manipulation sets (with armor powers instead of melee attacks)

 

One of the big gimicks of the AT is that Melee attacks would be empowered by stacking buffs generated using ranged attacks from range. If you ever played Final Fantasy XIV, the AT would play VERY similar to Red Mages, only no black/white balance. Instead just build up the meter, and use it as a secondary power source to turn those melee strikes into extremely powerful attacks.

 

For the most part the AT would be playing a DPS role with some hard crowd control on their secondary and some team support on their epics.

 

It is a concept I still hope to realize at some point. If it was to happen, it would very likely start with just 3 or 4 primary and secondary sets, at least at first. Getting sentinels out the door was ridiculously hard, and it still needs lots of work.

Very interesting!

 

So what made you opt for powersets that were 'muck like' assault and manipulation, instead of using them as is? I figure there must be some big problems to avoid using stuff laid out in the game already?

 

It seems like it would be pretty close to assault/armor already, except for a few mez powers. Though does it need mez? I'm unsure how it factors in exactly.

 

Would going for 2 'dual type' powersets like assault and manipulation spread the archetype too thin maybe? Fitting into 2 or 3 roles and having ancillaries compensate/compliment the rest is just fine Instead of going for a jack of all trades. The whole Assault/Composition thing Guardians had made for an interesting archetype for sure, but tried to juggle too much at once, how would Strikers avoid doing the same?

 

it's why I think Assault/Armor and/or Manipulation/Support would be good candidates for new archetypes (in theory at least) since the powersets already exist, and it fits into 3 roles max (melee/ranged/armor and melee/control/support)

 

Anyway, thanks for the insight! good to know there's big plans going forward! 😀

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tyrannical

[Zepp]

9 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

There was a shelved AT called the Striker, it was supposed to have a primary set that would be pretty much Assault-Like and a secondary that would be similar to Blaster Manipulation sets (with armor powers instead of melee attacks)

 

One of the big gimicks of the AT is that Melee attacks would be empowered by stacking buffs generated using ranged attacks from range. If you ever played Final Fantasy XIV, the AT would play VERY similar to Red Mages, only no black/white balance. Instead just build up the meter, and use it as a secondary power source to turn those melee strikes into extremely powerful attacks.

 

For the most part the AT would be playing a DPS role with some hard crowd control on their secondary and some team support on their epics.

 

It is a concept I still hope to realize at some point. If it was to happen, it would very likely start with just 3 or 4 primary and secondary sets, at least at first. Getting sentinels out the door was ridiculously hard, and it still needs lots of work.

There was a discussion around a similar idea on the board a short while ago...

 

Operative (19.09.24.06.34.01)

Assault/{Armor/Manipulation/Control}

Preparation: Low threat level, stealth (weak), and a bar that constantly builds but is reduced by attacks - grants improved secondary effects

Operatives are strategic agents that have many skills that they must strategically employ to be effective. They use a Manipulation secondary that has been bolstered by a modicum of armor and control for survival.

There are suggestions for the modified manipulation secondary (Intrigue) as well.

 

I think this is probably one of the best developed AT suggestion threads I have seen...

Edited January 26, 2020 by Zepp

[Pbuckley818]

On 1/25/2020 at 3:42 PM, biostem said:

What would be interesting would be an AT whose inherent performed differently based upon their proximity to the enemy.  For instance, imagine if you gained better defenses the closer you were to an enemy, by better damage the further away you were from them...

I wonder how hard it would be to create an innate that grants a damage buff, and then grants an effect that decreases your damage in exchange for a Defense/Resist Buff that scales based on the number of foes within a small area around of you?

[siolfir]

On 1/26/2020 at 9:07 AM, Replacement said:

I think we'd be happy with 4x4 set options to launch with for any theoretical new AT. 

You're not that new to game forums are you? 😛

 

With all of the "proliferate everything!" calls that have been around since before I started, you know that as soon as someone sees that an assault wasn't ported as-is there will be complaints, and then someone is going to demand that a new <insert attack type here> set is created because they couldn't possibly make their concept work any other way even using power customization options to make it look different and no they won't just play the AT that already has that powerset combination because it needs to be on this one instead.

 

"Happy with 4x4 set options" won't even make it past the patch notes announcing the new AT.

[biostem]

3 hours ago, Pbuckley818 said:

I wonder how hard it would be to create an innate that grants a damage buff, and then grants an effect that decreases your damage in exchange for a Defense/Resist Buff that scales based on the number of foes within a small area around of you?

Well, you could have it be an innate that grants a damage debuff for every enemy within 10'-15', and a defense bonus at the same time.

 

EDIT:  I was also thinking:  This hypothetical assault-using AT could have an inherent that pulses out a small AoE every few seconds - if any enemies are found, grant a def/res buff for each, (up to some cap), and if no enemies are found, grant a damage buff...

Edited January 27, 2020 by biostem

[Steampunkette]

2 hours ago, biostem said:

Well, you could have it be an innate that grants a damage debuff for every enemy within 10'-15', and a defense bonus at the same time.

 

EDIT:  I was also thinking:  This hypothetical assault-using AT could have an inherent that pulses out a small AoE every few seconds - if any enemies are found, grant a def/res buff for each, (up to some cap), and if no enemies are found, grant a damage buff...

That's an interesting idea... allow me to make a counter suggestion:

 

A pair of passive auras for 2 parts of a 4-part inherent. One pulses to 90ft, one pulses to 20ft. The one which pulses to 90ft grants one stack of "Meleetastic!" per enemy hit. The second inherent at 20ft pulses and removes one stack of "Meleetastic!" and grants one stack of "Shoot 'em!" per enemy hit. Both Meleetastic! and Shoot 'em! have a maximum of 5 stacks.

 

Each melee attack in the Assault Primary gets tagged with a new inherent effect that each stack of "Meleetastic!" grants a bit of extra damage per stack (Let's say 10% per, scaling with enhancements). Each ranged attack in the Assault Primary gets tagged with the new inherent effect that each stack of "Shoot 'em!" grants a bit of extra damage per stack (Let's say 8% per, scaling with enhancements).

 

Having the "Short Range" aura remove 1 stack of Meleetastic means it'll strip away characters in the short range aura who are also tagged by the "Long Range" aura.