Focused Feedback: Dark Melee Update (Build 1)

[summers]

I think the Dark Consumption power needs some tweaks - it's my opinion that we have too many nukes already, and outside the small radius this is qualifying as another. It deals a lot of damage, is heaven for procs with its recharge, and the set comes with its own self-buffing engine that is going to push these figures higher and higher.

 

I'd much rather see it on a shorter recharge and as part of an attack chain, rather than a crowd nuke.

 

Three enemies, with Adrenal Booster and Soul Drain:

 

 You hit Equinox Adjutant with your Dark Consumption for 269.61 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Equinox Adjutant with your Dark Consumption for 111.01 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Equinox Adjutant with your Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage for 71.74 points of Smashing damage.

 

I could reasonably forsee this thing being turned into a frankenslot monster with a set up like this:

 

 

In fact, here it is unbuffed:

 

You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 227.94 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 93.85 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 64.57 points of Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage for 64.57 points of Smashing damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for Lethal Damage for 64.57 points of Lethal damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 96.37 points of Fire damage.

 

611ish damage without any buffs - no Soul Drain, nothing. This is too much in my opinion, and this is 'optimised' from 5 minutes of testing.

Edited February 27, 2020 by summers

[Haijinx]

Wouldn't this be only the 3rd Melee attack set with a "nuke"?  

[summers]

6 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Wouldn't this be only the 3rd Melee attack set with a "nuke"?  

Every 50 has a nuke in Judgement Incarnates, Blast sets have crashless T9s. It's my opinion that this is too many already

[Coyote]

6 hours ago, summers said:

In fact, here it is unbuffed:

 

You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 227.94 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 93.85 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 64.57 points of Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage for 64.57 points of Smashing damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for Lethal Damage for 64.57 points of Lethal damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 96.37 points of Fire damage.

 

611ish damage without any buffs - no Soul Drain, nothing. This is too much in my opinion, and this is 'optimised' from 5 minutes of testing.

 

Not that I actually disagree with the CONCLUSION, but retroactively picking an activation where all IOs fired off is not appropriate math for balancing. Use a 90% cap formula for the damage procs to determine the actual average damage of the power (about 572 damage). The point is still made, as this seems high, but it's based on a more solid foundation.

 

Also, just to put another point of comparison: Lightning Rod, similarly slotted, does about 610 damage, with Knockdown (though it may be slotted for lesser damage in order to put in the Force Feedback proc), and that's without Adrenal or Soul Drain. In a much larger area. I'm ... kind of thinking the new DC is REALLY good, but then I look at a few other long-recharge PBAoE powers (LR, Shield Charge and Burn from the secondaries, Savage Leap), and it seems to be within the ballpark of those powers in damage, but with good utility balanced with a MUCH smaller radius.

 

Edit: to add... Soul Drain was used for DC's numbers. Generally you'd have Build-Up available for LR, and using that, LR goes up to over 800 damage. I'm really starting to be less worried about DC's being overpowered as I look at more comparable builds. It's become an excellent power but we're not ending up with an OP set, I think. Well, unless the argument is that it's OP because it combines what's good AoE damage WITH probably the best defensive abilities for an attack set.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Coyote

[Kumate]

He stated the numbers was without soul drain. I think with the range and no knockdown its where it needs to be like you said.  I think SM just needs a little adjustment but thats me (90 arc vice 120) "611ish damage without any buffs - no Soul Drain, nothing. This is too much in my opinion, and this is 'optimised' from 5 minutes of testing"

[Broken_Prey]

12 hours ago, KelvinKole said:

Which honestly begs the question, why was time even put into this? I don't recall seeing dozens of forum posts screaming for a dark melee rework. Martial arts? Yes. Energy Melee? Yes. Force field? Yes. Electric blast? Yes. Dark melee? Nah, it's fine. 

 

Voice of customer should be heard. 

Captain Powerhouse answer that question in another thread. 

 

 

[ScarySai]

What level was the mob, summers? That's important. Those numbers are unimpressive if it's +0 or +1.

 

@Galaxy Brain The thought just occurred to me, but have you considered running a test without using consumption as a way of seeing how just the shadow maul change impacts the set?

Edited February 27, 2020 by ScarySai

[Captain Powerhouse]

9 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I was able to play the new DM tonight and ran the set in the same way as before in my Scrapper Melee Testing

 

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

[Jimmy]

12 hours ago, KelvinKole said:

Which honestly begs the question, why was time even put into this? I don't recall seeing dozens of forum posts screaming for a dark melee rework. Martial arts? Yes. Energy Melee? Yes. Force field? Yes. Electric blast? Yes. Dark melee? Nah, it's fine. 

 

Voice of customer should be heard. 

Nobody here is a customer.

 

We're volunteers working on a game that we all love, and we spend the limited time available to us on the areas that make the most sense to us at the time. Dark Melee only required minimal effort to bring up to scratch, the other sets you mention would require a much larger time investment.

We absolutely take player feedback into consideration when deciding what to do, but we can only do so much at a time.

 

Please consider pitching in where you can if you want the game to be as good as it can be. We rely heavily on players using the beta server and providing feedback on their testing to keep things running smoothly and to ensure updates are released in a timely manner.

[ScarySai]

12 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

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

If that's the case, then glad to hear it. The fact it could crit was the only thing I found broken about it.

 

Thanks CP.

[Captain Powerhouse]

9 hours ago, Haijinx said:

The one that disappoints me is Fire Melee, it would be nice if that one was in the top 3 of the IO one at least since it gets no mitigation.

 

Its hard for Fire Melee to do extremely well on IO world due to it having no side effects to slot for other than more damage. The set might be reviewed in the future, even on SOs it is not as high ranking as it should for a set that just does more damage as a secondary effect.

 

8 hours ago, summers said:

 

You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 227.94 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Dark Consumption for 93.85 points of Negative Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 64.57 points of Energy damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage for 64.57 points of Smashing damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for Lethal Damage for 64.57 points of Lethal damage.
You hit Vortex Cor Leonis Fire with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 96.37 points of Fire damage.

 

611ish damage without any buffs - no Soul Drain, nothing. This is too much in my opinion, and this is 'optimised' from 5 minutes of testing.

 

This is more of an issue with PPM procs, though, something that needs addressing sooner or later.

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

21 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

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

Even without the crits I saw Soul + Cons wipe out whole packs of minions, though that is good that it wont crit going forward!

 

My only concern is that it is approaching Spine/Rad/Katana tier offense while also having the least resisted damage type in the game + awesome secondary effects.

 

@ScarySai,I could try running just with maul and soul drain to see how it compares to the vanilla runs. 

 

[csr]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

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

I think the END% scaling should be toned down as well, with the power scaling from say 35-80% of the damage it does now instead of 10-100% (you need some END to cast it, so it's never 0).  I think it's being cast with more END% on average than might have been expected.  On my two test runs I averaged around 96% (Incarnate /Regen Brute) and 70% or so (L32-33 /SR Scrapper against END draining Freaks).  The latter case is ironically the one that makes me think the scaling should be reduced, as I was actually eating blues to buff my damage on a power with +END as a major component.

Edited February 27, 2020 by csr

[KelvinKole]

@Jimmy

I'm rereading my post and realizing that it probably came off as being ungrateful. I'm not. I LOVED this game in my youth and the excitement I felt when I heard it was back rivaled only marrying my wife and the birth of my kids (is that sad?). I'm truly appreciative of the amazing things the homecoming team is doing. My comment was meant to express that I thought there may be higher priorities that your limited resources could focus on, but I also understand the value of quick win. Sincerely, thank you. 

 

With DC no longer being able to crit, things are going in the right direction. There is a lot of good data from @Galaxy Brain that shows dark melee may in fact have been underperforming, but I will say that the test is really a measure of dps; it's harder to quantify the sustain that dark melee provides and assign value to it, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it when trying to buff its damage. Moving it up to a top performer in dps is truly an overcorrection. 

 

 

 

 

[Doc_Scorpion]

16 hours ago, Replacement said:

I always think it's stupid to balance for level 50 and Incarnates, but @Haijinx is right.  Even without double XP, DFB, AE, or anything else to speed through the experience, running the starter Origin contacts even, you still won't see level 7 long enough for this to matter.  There's no hard line, here, folks.  There's a fuzzy region where some builds will do better and others will do worse, and they will all feel "incomplete."  If I were to try and draw that line, however, I'd probably put it around level 14.

The folks that think we don't need to test the lower levels need to spend more time in King's Row...  Because people do spend time running content there, and I see them all the time when I'm running radios to grab the Heart of the City badge.  More than once I've had to help out someone take down Chernobog.

Whether in the tutorial, Atlas Park, Mercy Island, or Nova Praetoria - the game starts at level 1.  (I started testing at lvl 7 because I had a DM/shield Brute on Live that was lvl 7...) 

In this case, as Shadow Maul is available at lvl 2, it's particularly important to test at low levels and get a feel for how the changes affect low level play.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, Kumate said:

He stated the numbers was without soul drain. I think with the range and no knockdown its where it needs to be like you said.  I think SM just needs a little adjustment but thats me (90 arc vice 120) "611ish damage without any buffs - no Soul Drain, nothing. This is too much in my opinion, and this is 'optimised' from 5 minutes of testing"

 

Ah, I missed that. And I forgot that Lightning Rod doesn't proc damage IOs as a normal power, but as a pet summons... that does change the balance question, then. With LR's damage lower and DC's higher, it seems that DC's damage has been raised to be comparable to LR or maybe higher, depending on how many targets were hit by Soul Drain.

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Broken_Prey said:

Captain Powerhouse answer that question in another thread. 

 

 

Indeed.

Obvious is obvious.

[ScarySai]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

This is more of an issue with PPM procs, though, something that needs addressing sooner or later.

 

 

Pre-i24 rules would be nice.

Edited February 27, 2020 by ScarySai

[Galaxy Brain]

33 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

With DC no longer being able to crit, things are going in the right direction. There is a lot of good data from @Galaxy Brain that shows dark melee may in fact have been underperforming, but I will say that the test is really a measure of dps; it's harder to quantify the sustain that dark melee provides and assign value to it, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it when trying to buff its damage. Moving it up to a top performer in dps is truly an overcorrection. 

The test's enemies are designed to be a danger to the player (given they are using /WP on SO's with only combat jumping as a legal pool option), so if you just stand there you will get bopped. Dark's sustain did help here where I could heal myself + toss out -ToHit or the Fear to keep myself alive in situations where I would have certainly gotten mowed down otherwise! 

 

In the main thread for this I am concocting a way to better measure the defensive properties of the melee sets as well, though I do feel that overall the test is not a pure DPS run as we see in Pylons. Safety does matter as "DNF's" get recorded (I died twice like with the vanilla DM tests funnily enough thanks to bad RNG) and sets with less or more Did-Not-Finishes have that weighed against their overall performance. The main differences now are that you can more easily afflict -ToHit to a crowd to help mitigate more incoming attacks, on top of simply clearing enemies faster which undoubtedly boosts the survival of the set. 

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

 

My only concern is that it is approaching Spine/Rad/Katana tier offense while also having the least resisted damage type in the game + awesome secondary effects.

While I can also see a slight downward adjustment for Dark Consumption in the tea leaves (and will not complain at all if I am wrong😁), approaching instead of eclipsing seems to be the whole point of these changes in the first place.

 

 

 

As far as Shadow Maul is concerned, I have both advocated and waited years for just such an adjustment. A Dark Consumption adjustment was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[Galaxy Brain]

Edit: Somehow double-posted?

 

Also, @Captain Powerhouse... you aren't the one I always see lurking on my google doc are you? 😉

Edited February 27, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[ScarySai]

34 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

As far as Shadow Maul is concerned, I have both advocated and waited years for just such an adjustment. A Dark Consumption adjustment was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

I've been looking for an excuse to remake my dark/shield scrapper. This looks like a sign to get it ready.

 

Stalling on big packs when charge was on CD was always its weakness, this basically alleviates that problem.

 

The crit removal will solve crazy screenshot bait posts from popping in, but won't damage general play too much, since trying to game it around the crit proc seemed clunky in my testing as opposed to just firing it off after a drain.

 

There's a huge dropoff after TW and WM, so I'm not too concerned about it matching spines/katana's performance.

Edited February 27, 2020 by ScarySai

[Myrmidon]

51 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Edit: Somehow double-posted?

 

Also, @Captain Powerhouse... you aren't the one I always see lurking on my google doc are you? 😉

I’m sure that you see a lot more than him lurking in there.😁

[Anubis_TD]

I wonder if a comprise of the too much and it's perfect can be found.

Let's look at it a different way. Personally, the nuke on DC makes very little sense. 

 

My thoughts are keep all timing changes to DM and all changes to SM. Take the nuke put it on SD and remove end variance to dam. Then give DM SD's old dam to help mitigate the damage loss from both powers.  This way the nuke is unboostable ( new word) within the set and give more consistent output.  

 

Also would like to see SD get a base dam of 20%, while lowering to 6% its target buff.  This gives same AOE dam but help s in long AV fights where SD fails

 

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Anubis_TD

[nicoliy]

3 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

Its hard for Fire Melee to do extremely well on IO world due to it having no side effects to slot for other than more damage. The set might be reviewed in the future, even on SOs it is not as high ranking as it should for a set that just does more damage as a secondary effect.

 

 

This is more of an issue with PPM procs, though, something that needs addressing sooner or later.

 

 

I’m not excited for PPM changes, my kheldian damage thrives on procs for ST damage. Let’s push those way, way out lol