Dark Melee Future [re: Dark Melee Update]

[Naraka]

10 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I think I am alone in this, but I wish Shadow Maul had been made a single target damage and have the damage increased. Making it a larger cone IMO was the opposite of what it actually needed. Before anyone rips me for this statement, just first realize that I have acknowledged that I am most likely alone in this opinion.

Not really alone.  Granted, I don't see a reason to make SM ST, but I'd have preferred it stay similar to how it was rather than a no-thought AoE.

[Galaxy Brain]

41 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Not really alone.  Granted, I don't see a reason to make SM ST, but I'd have preferred it stay similar to how it was rather than a no-thought AoE.

If it stayed a thought-AoE it would have to be competitive with no-thought AoEs and become wumbo OP to be worth

[marcussmythe]

Galaxy Brain does touch on an interesting point - how do you balance 'no thought' sets vs 'active management' sets?

 

Should there be a payoff for having to keep track of weird mechanics and line up cooldowns, or is that just a feature of a set?

 

As they've added mechanical complexity to offense sets, they have at the same time often added more 'oomph' - though I don't know if this is by plan, or simply a matter of 'newer sets get more complex mechanics because we've learned how to do them, and newer sets get more power because we've changed the design balance point of the game since the early days, and also maybe cashshop lol'.

 

Assuming good intentions (and it is always best to do so), lets presume that the design intent was to make some sets capable of higher performance at a higher 'workload' - two of the current top performers, Bioarmor and Titan Weapons, are to my mind prime examples of responding very well to micromanagement, and paying that back in very high performance - extreme outlier performance when used together.

 

But do we want to buff things like Dark Melee by giving them more power, at the expense of more cognitive load?  Whats the right balance point?  What of players who TOOK sets because they were easy to drive?

 

((Note, this is aside from the issue that some sets are both very easy to use and very, very powerful - right under TW lies the likes of Fire Melee and Warmace, both powerhouse sets that perform quite well if you simply hit the keyboard with your face, repeatedly... and they lie far ABOVE other sets that require all sorts of mechanics, or even require their mechanics be ignored because they are so bad, to get performance that is still mathematically inferior - Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee... and the basic issue of power creep is still there...))

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, marcussmythe said:

right under TW lies the likes of Fire Melee and Warmace, both powerhouse sets that perform quite well if you simply hit the keyboard with your face, repeatedly.

Wanna touch on this cus its half right.

 

In my testing, Fire Melee was actually detrimental compared to the other fire sets due to the lack of secondary effects and having a poo version of Fire Breath.  Conversely, War Mace is one of the better weapon sets due to mixing stuns and knockdowns, and having amazing AoE coverage with generous arcs (see shatter and crowd control) that make it much more forgiving to position, layered on top of good damage and secondaries to provide a layered mesh of offense and defense.

 

Imho, the sets directly below TW at least on a baseline level are actually Katana and Staff. Both offer great damage, aoe, and safety but also rely on the player being cognizant of when to use certain powers as opposed to simply face-rolling. Conversely, sets like Kinetic and Dark (pre change) were at the bottom as they paid too heavily for what you have to manage and end up losing output to many sets which can just jump into the fray and swing or sets like the upper echelon which can both just jump in + reward players for mastery.

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

If it stayed a thought-AoE it would have to be competitive with no-thought AoEs and become wumbo OP to be worth

I don't personally think so.

 

Outside of ATs like Stalkers, the set has other utilities that could be the set's focus since that is what the set's gimmick is.  If, for example, Shadow Maul remained the same cast/arc/rech but the damage was slightly bumped, it wouldn't be meta but it would still be useful.  It also wouldn't be OP but then it doesn't need to be.  The set's gimmick is utility, not AoE.

 

7 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Conversely, sets like Kinetic and Dark (pre change) were at the bottom as they paid too heavily for what you have to manage and end up losing output to many sets which can just jump into the fray and swing or sets like the upper echelon which can both just jump in + reward players for mastery.

To those sets' credit, your metric to rank the melee sets purposefully omitted aspects like out-of-set AoE which would benefit Dark Melee the most.  Coupled with Soul Drain, those late-game and pool AoEs get a generous boost and patch up a shortcoming the set has in the AoE department.

 

It's unpopular, but I'd have rather the set remained more ST and utility focused.  Same with players advocating to keep Energy Melee ST focused, I personally don't get how those players seem to get more credibility in their view of the set but anyone pushing back on modernizing DM are mostly scoffed at.

 

1 hour ago, marcussmythe said:

Galaxy Brain does touch on an interesting point - how do you balance 'no thought' sets vs 'active management' sets?

 

Should there be a payoff for having to keep track of weird mechanics and line up cooldowns, or is that just a feature of a set?

 

As they've added mechanical complexity to offense sets, they have at the same time often added more 'oomph' - though I don't know if this is by plan, or simply a matter of 'newer sets get more complex mechanics because we've learned how to do them, and newer sets get more power because we've changed the design balance point of the game since the early days, and also maybe cashshop lol'.

 

Assuming good intentions (and it is always best to do so), lets presume that the design intent was to make some sets capable of higher performance at a higher 'workload' - two of the current top performers, Bioarmor and Titan Weapons, are to my mind prime examples of responding very well to micromanagement, and paying that back in very high performance - extreme outlier performance when used together.

 

But do we want to buff things like Dark Melee by giving them more power, at the expense of more cognitive load?  Whats the right balance point?  What of players who TOOK sets because they were easy to drive?

 

((Note, this is aside from the issue that some sets are both very easy to use and very, very powerful - right under TW lies the likes of Fire Melee and Warmace, both powerhouse sets that perform quite well if you simply hit the keyboard with your face, repeatedly... and they lie far ABOVE other sets that require all sorts of mechanics, or even require their mechanics be ignored because they are so bad, to get performance that is still mathematically inferior - Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee... and the basic issue of power creep is still there...))

I feel another aspect that gets ignored is power pool access.  In the early games, Cross Punch didn't exist.  Wall of Force, Spring Attack, etc etc.  These and other powers are bridges that shore up gaps that you can either live with or actively fill if you desire.  Instead of seeing this as a benefit, it's viewed as a detriment.  If the set cannot fill all it's own gaps, it's a hole, IOs don't count and what is meta is the goal.  Ignore the fact sets like Titan Weapons don't often deal with out-of-set attacks, that should really be a benefit to sets that can...but it's not...and it should.

 

It's one of the reasons I liked the idea of Dark Consumption being a long duration DoT.  If it was a DoT, that gives the power room to do more damage than normal, it opens up the prospect of other effects like debuffs and it would still fall more into the set's actual niche of being more a utility set vs a DPS AoE machine like many other sets.  

[marcussmythe]

32 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

In my testing, Fire Melee was actually detrimental compared to the other fire sets due to the lack of secondary effects and having a poo version of Fire Breath.  Conversely, War Mace is one of the better weapon sets due to mixing stuns and knockdowns, and having amazing AoE coverage with generous arcs (see shatter and crowd control) that make it much more forgiving to position, layered on top of good damage and secondaries to provide a layered mesh of offense and defense.

 

Imho, the sets directly below TW at least on a baseline level are actually Katana and Staff. Both offer great damage, aoe, and safety but also rely on the player being cognizant of when to use certain powers as opposed to simply face-rolling. Conversely, sets like Kinetic and Dark (pre change) were at the bottom as they paid too heavily for what you have to manage and end up losing output to many sets which can just jump into the fray and swing or sets like the upper echelon which can both just jump in + reward players for mastery.

Fire Melee may well be weak compared to other -fire- sets.  It remains in the top 3 of -melee- sets for raw DPS, slightly behind Savage and comically behind Titan Weapons (as are all things that deal damage).

 

Now, I will grant you that Fire Melee lacks meaningful secondary effects, dealing only damage, and that the two superior damage sets, Savage and TW, possess secondary effects that add value (Savage for Endredux and Recharge, and TW for being an amazing mish-mash of Knock, -DEF, and -Res that almost seems custom created to slot in whatever procs most benefit you).  Additionally, Mace sits right behind Fire Melee, only with decent secondary effects, none of its damage tied up in DOTs, and doing smashing instead of lethal.  WM is probably my choice for a #2 set - but that goes to how one evaluates survival mechanisms.

 

Katana and Staff rate rather further down on damage, but have other benefits (I agree as to Staff's strength, due to its many tools.  I find Katana a bit underwhelming, personally - but I typically find lethal damage sets a bit underwhelming, due to the very common nature of Lethal resist - but thats very much a YMMV)

 

 

More broadly, and in response to Naraka:

Titan has some issues going out of set, but little need, IMHO.   Sets like Energy Melee CAN go out of set - but often need to, to cover vast, gaping holes in their capability.   Certainly Energy Melee can make better use of pool attacks than does Titan Weapons.. but Energy Melee will spend pool selections and power selections for the joy of -still- being mediocre by comparison.  Of course, it gets the ability to progress the debt badge with its primary attack, so I suppose that sort of power must be paid for.

 

More broadly, though, I agree - some sets give you free power choices, because they do their business in a few powers (I love Dark Melee for this.  Buildup, Self Heal, 2 other single target attacks, and an AOE - and everything else is optional - so even if its total damage out is not the best, its utility and flexibility is unparalleled)

[Galaxy Brain]

@Naraka, the tests put the primaries in as much of a vacuum as possible to weigh against each other since adding in pool powers or tertiary sets just adds way more layers. We could try it again, but the sets would need the same variables: they all use gloom, they all use Fireball, etc. I doubt it would realistically change that much.

 

@marcussmythe, the tests referenced were done with conditions to mimic a standard mission as well as what would be considered "average" / "Default" slotting to compare set's baselines. At that level compared to other sets, emulating a sort of normal player, Fire Melee ends up not as hot.

[Zeraphia]

3 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

@Naraka, the tests put the primaries in as much of a vacuum as possible to weigh against each other since adding in pool powers or tertiary sets just adds way more layers. We could try it again, but the sets would need the same variables: they all use gloom, they all use Fireball, etc. I doubt it would realistically change that much.

 

@marcussmythe, the tests referenced were done with conditions to mimic a standard mission as well as what would be considered "average" / "Default" slotting to compare set's baselines. At that level compared to other sets, emulating a sort of normal player, Fire Melee ends up not as hot.

I LOVE your pun at the end there! And you are rather accurate, Fiery Melee ends up having an unfortunate place given it doesn't provide any other secondary effect, in addition to not being the highest damaging melee set for ST or AoE (which honestly it rightfully should given it literally in its description trades any other meaningful secondary effect for its DoT damage), has nothing to protect the user via heal or knockdown or even -tohit, it also has very poor -res proc abilities... I really couldn't justify making a Fiery Melee toon for another other than theme unfortunately. BTW - I loved your testing and data and especially the commentary sections where you describe the pros and cons of each set! Invaluable to new or even vet players!

[marcussmythe]

Fair enough.  Set performance for a normal player playing with SOs or Generic IOs at +0/x1 who may not be entirely clear on why ‘procs’ are a thing will have basically nothing in common with set performance in the hands of the ‘I can give up 1/10th second on the recharge on Attack B, as it still recharges in time for my DPS Rotation, to switch from an Acc/Dam/Rchg to an Acc/Dam which gives me 2% more damage, a net gain, and I switch in these t4 incarnates against this villain group and oh, move the proc from there to there so its buff lines up with your better DPA attack (for values of DPA when you get the crit bonus and it only applies to the next attack’ crowd.

 

Your form of analysis is likely more cogent to the vast majority of play, and the play experience/fun of the first type of player described is no less valuable or important than that of the second.

[Wavicle]

Well if they nerf TW a little then only Savage might be ahead of Fire and the tradeoff there is about damage type and build up.

[Troo]

So you're suggesting 'adjusting' both Titan Weapons and Savage at the same time?

[Wavicle]

I wasn't suggesting adjusting Savage at all. Fire beats Savage in most short fights. It's only against EBs and AVs that Savage really does better than fire, and even then resistances are going to be an issue.

[Bopper]

6 hours ago, Troo said:

So you're suggesting 'adjusting' both Titan Weapons and Savage at the same time?

If we're talking about Scrapper's Shred not being able to crit, and/or Stalker's Hemorrhage being broken (not broken as in O.P, but it's O.P. because its broken...incorrectly coded), then yes Savage could be adjusted too. But not in the same way TW will be.

[aethereal]

On 6/23/2020 at 11:19 PM, Bopper said:

If we're talking about Scrapper's Shred not being able to crit, and/or Stalker's Hemorrhage being broken (not broken as in O.P, but it's O.P. because its broken...incorrectly coded), then yes Savage could be adjusted too. But not in the same way TW will be.

How is stalker hemorrhage incorrectly coded?

[Bopper]

30 minutes ago, aethereal said:

How is stalker hemorrhage incorrectly coded?

 

The image is a table I made to show the effects of Stalker Hemorrhage. You'll see there are 10 effect groups (0-9). Among those, 5 are PVE effects, 3 are PVP effect, and the other 2 deal with the Blood/Exhausted mechanics (which applies to both PVE and PVP).

 

Of the 5 PVE effects,

1. The first is a standard up front damage of base 42.26 (0.76 scale).
2. The 2nd effect requires less than 5 Blood Frenzy and does TWO DoTs (one is 5 ticks of 18.13 damage that scales with blood frenzy, the other is 5 ticks of 7.67 damage that also scales with blood frenzy).
3. The 3rd effect replaces the 2nd effect as it occurs when you have 5 Blood Frenzy. It still does 2 DoTs, but those DoTs are stronger in base damage (19.07, 8.06) and do 6 ticks instead of 5 ticks.
4. The 4th effect is your Hide Crit, which does the same 42.26 up front damage (0.76 scale) and does TWO DoTs once again, the 5 ticks of 18.13 and the 6 ticks of 19.07 (both scale with Blood Frenzy).
5. Finally, the 5th effect is your "non-Hide" Crit. I use quotations because the chance to crit is 100% however the damage is equivalent to 1 tick from your DoT (18.13). This small amount of damage scales with Blood Frenzy, but it also applies a curious +0.76 in its magnitude expression. What does this 0.76 do, exactly? It literally subtracts 0.76 damage from scaled and enhanced portion of that 18.13 damage. That probably isn't clear, so let's use numbers as an example. Let's say you have no enhancements and no blood stacks and no damage bonuses, the damage would be (1+0.04x0)x18.13 - 0.76 = 18.13 - 0.76 = 17.37. Now let's say you have 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy, and slotted 100% damage enhancement. The damage becomes (1+0.04x5)x18.13x(100%+100%)-0.76 = 43.512 - 0.76 = 42.752. So what that 0.76 does is simply subtracts 0.76 from the final damage total. It's never boosted, it's never enhanced, it just subtracts that number. But why? Not sure.

Now let's look at the 3 PVP effect,

1. The first PVP effect (Effect #4 in the table) is a standard upfront damage (much like PVE's first effect, Effect #0). One major difference between the PVP and PVE versions, the PVP damage scales with Blood Frenzy whereas the PVE damage does not scale.
2. The 2nd effect is the PVP Hide Crit, which does the same damage as the first effect but has 0.72 subtracted from the final enhanced damage (for whatever reason).
3. The 3rd effect is the PVP Non-Hide Crit, which has a 20% chance of happening but only goes off if the player is Held or Sleeping. This also scales with Blood Frenzy and subtracts 0.72 for some peculiar reason.

So PVP looks nothing like PVE. No DoTs for PVP whereas PVE gets 2 DoTs on one effect, and another 2 DoTs on one effect when coming out of Hide. PVE has a 100% chance to do a non-hide crit for a DoT tick worth of damage, while PVP gets a 20% chance if the Player is Held or Sleeping.

 

So I don't know...maybe I am overthinking it when it was just coded incorrectly. But it feels very odd that any of these peculiarities are intended. You would normally expect a non-hide crit for full damage with a base percent chance of 7% (10% because you count as a teammate). You would expect if your PVE damage gets 4 DoTs that PvP damage might get more than zero. You would expect there to not be a weird scalar subtrating from your final damage output. So, I think it's broken. But I don't know for sure.

[Troo]

Beta for the next release should be soon, shouldn't it?

[Troo]

I guess that should have been "soon^TM"..

[Solarverse]

On 9/8/2020 at 3:21 PM, Troo said:

I guess that should have been "soon^TM"..

I have been very patiently waiting.

[Troo]

something stood out as missing in:

Anyone able to shed some light on Dark Melee developments?

[Troo]

crickets for dark melee page 6..

[Wavicle]

Just now, Troo said:

crickets for dark melee page 6..

Because the set is probably not going to change further. The Shadow Maul change was enough.

[Troo]

It was a pretty hot topic until the Dark Consumption tweak on beta.