Homecoming Statistics: March 2020

[SF1]

I made my name on my main server back in the day (Pinnacle) by playing builds that people weren't playing much, if at all.  Glad to see these numbers confirm that I may still be the only person who plays a Mind/Sonic controller.

 

Also by that nature, I'm looking at these numbers and thinking about all sorts of wacky new builds to try.  Hello Ice/Claws tanker

[Myrmidon]

All of my current 50s:

 

Blaster-Dual Pistols/Martial Manipulation: 1 of 41

Brute-Radiation Melee/Fiery Aura: 1 of 3,423

Brute-Savage Melee/Bio Armor: 1 of 171

Brute-Kinetic Melee/Willpower: 1 of 32

Corruptor-Fire Blast/Radiation Emission: 1 of 229

Corruptor-Kinetics/Electrical Blast: 1 of 125

Scrapper-Dark Melee/Dark Armor: 1 of 116

Sentinel-Water Blast/Willpower: 1 of 51

Stalker-Martial Arts/Dark Armor: 1 of 2

Tanker-Radiation Armor/Radiation Melee: 1 of 343

Tanker-Willpower/Street Justice: 1 of 101

Tanker-Staff Fighting/Bio Armor: 1 of 58

Tanker-Willpower/Kinetic Melee: 1 of 17

VEAT-Bane/Soldier: No stats given

 

My Fire Brute (the first character I played since the reversal of The Snap) isn’t built for farming, however, it is quite capable of doing so. Up until the Tanker changes were announced, my sole Tanker (Rad/Rad) was crested purely to try out a Tanker combination that I never played on test during Tanker Tuesdays. As you can clearly see, I love the Tanker changes enough that my main switched from a KM/WP Brute to a WP/KM Tanker.
 

I have all of the combinations of VEAT builds (Bane/Soldier, Fortunata/Widow and the Spider as a separate character because I loathe seeing crab claws on my Bane/Soldier), however, only the Bane/Soldier has made it to 50 so far. If possible, I would like to see the ratio for VEATs in this analysis.

 

It looks like that I am short a Controller, Defender, Dominator and both Kheldian options for the entire set. The first three are mid-30s to 40s and I have yet to try out the Khelds.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Myrmidon

[Fan Mail]

Where's the Blaster love, Myrmi?

[Flints]

On 3/4/2020 at 6:26 AM, Midnight Blue Mage said:

😮 My Stalker has a soulmate! I must find them 😄

I got super excited thinking I found my ice/claws soulmate tanker (since there's only 2 of us) but you're a stalker 😞

[Midnight Blue Mage]

1 hour ago, Flints said:

I got super excited thinking I found my ice/claws soulmate tanker (since there's only 2 of us) but you're a stalker 😞

All good, homie; we are still brothers in pointiness and iciness! 😄 Excellent choice, friend

 

 

 

[Midnight Blue Mage]

On 3/3/2020 at 12:55 AM, summers said:

STALKER

There's no 50 for Claws/Fiery Aura

❤️

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by Midnight Blue Mage
photo

[artphobia]

3 hours ago, Midnight Blue Mage said:

❤️

(pic)

 

 

good call on showing timestamps  ... gonna have to edit my earlier post to include all those now 😜  Nice work, brutha

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by artphobia
added link

[Myrmidon]

16 hours ago, Fan Mail said:

Where's the Blaster love, Myrmi?

I only have two, with the Gunkata at 50. The other one is my old Ice/Ice in the 30s.

[Midnight Blue Mage]

@artphobia Ahh awesome! Congratulations and  nicely done, homie 😄 

 

(I like that we even went for a similar look!) 

 

Paragon could always use more Stalkers, so I am happy to see that we are contributing to the population. Great stuff!

[garnetrising]

On 3/3/2020 at 12:55 AM, summers said:

STALKER

There's no 50 for Claws/Fiery Aura

And thus Starsteel was born.

[artphobia]

4 minutes ago, garnetrising said:

And thus Starsteel was born.

 

[Midnight Blue Mage]

1 hour ago, garnetrising said:

And thus Starsteel was born.

 

1 hour ago, artphobia said:

 

[MangoKulfi]

Dark/Psi Defender 1/10

Ninja/Energy Stalker 1/13

Sonic/Ice Blaster 1/6

And a Crab Spider

 

I think I need to make a Fiery Aura Brute to bump up my average.

[Coyotedancer]

On 3/6/2020 at 1:50 PM, Midnight Blue Mage said:

 

Mine's name is Ferrian… I haven't had time to do much with him yet, so he's still a wee little lowbie. XD

[DougGraves]

On 3/2/2020 at 6:00 PM, Troo said:

Excellent! Can we request some new unicorn numbers also? It seemed to spark folks trying new combos.

 

Example:

205

Ice Armor

Battle Ax

5

 

Ice armor battle axe named Nippy Cleavage

[Troo]

Oh no, you didn't!

 

Edited March 9, 2020 by Troo

[Safehouse]

Rolled a rad/WP scrapper a couple days ago - seems like a REALLY fun combo so far. Maybe the 22nd of its kind to reach 50? We shall see.

 

My main is an NRG/NRG blaster - the literal number one blaster combo 😆 

 

I also have a kinetic/energy scrapper. Another fun combo that Looks pretty and is surprisingly low on the list.

[Roki]

This one is my only level 50 to date.  The Fire/Elec Stalker combination was a blast to play and was almost entirely solo to 50.  Had no idea I had the only one.

 

215

Fiery Melee

Electric Armor

1

[Midnight Blue Mage]

14 hours ago, rhoji said:

This one is my only level 50 to date.  The Fire/Elec Stalker combination was a blast to play and was almost entirely solo to 50.  Had no idea I had the only one.

 

215

Fiery Melee

Electric Armor

1

Congratulations on your unicorn-kitt(a)y! It sounds like a really fun combo :]

[KC4800]

I am probably one of the few who makes no Fire Armor character or Spines Assault. It would be interesting to know how rare I am.

[KC4800]

My Alts

1	Corruptor	Peri-Dot	Ice/FF	1 of 7
2	Controller	Carmela Soprano	ILL/TA	1 of 11
3	Tanker	Phrendon Largo	Rad/WM	1 of 12
4	Stalker	Quid Pro Quo	SJ/Ice	1 of 17
5	Sentinel	Cayble	Beam/Nin	1 of 30
6	Blaster	Radmental Boy	Rad/MM	1 of 31
7	Brute	Schtick	EnerM/Inv	1 of 39
8	Dominator	Krown	Dark/Martial	1 of 57
9	Scrapper	Pork-Chop	MA/Nin	1 of 101
10	Defender	Dee Fender	Kin/Elec	1 of 155
11	MM	Anna Phylaxis	Beast/Nature	1 of 296

 

[seresibyl2]

So the question is, what do we do this data? We've seen several changes to Brutes etc but their overall play compared to some of the other classes is staggering (including Fiery aura, even outside of the farmers, it just goes up...)

 

Blasters are pretty obvious - they're the highest dps range, and controllers do what controllers do -- 

 

so what are we going to do for Dominators, Stalkers, Corruptors, Defenders and Masterminds?

Masterminds are a hard one - you lose the roleplayers in MMs, because hero MMs are lacking lackeys -- you would need to create a set of like, Angels or Fairy's or something to appeal to that audience... (Angels sounds like it could be a cool MM set, lol); they're also clunky, which you've guys have been working on fixing so maybe we'll eventually see that go up -- but pets need a MAJOR boost to survivability in Groups - think that's your main opportunity; it is not fun to constantly resummons (let's say, Zombies) every pull because they instantly die. I'd target that as a scaling group buff to make them pretty much AoE-unkillable in groups (Scaling Def or Resist/both based on party members so at a full group they can't die to AoE, because well they shouldn't... in groups).

 

I'm betting the data shows Corrupters and Defenders start to lose steam in the 30s, where being able to insta-kill things just starts to see them fall off... Not really a fix I can think of, but they need some something -- mass nerfing is pretty hard, but a lot of the defensive sets lose oomph as people start to gain a lot more self-survivability, so we see things like FF just die off; Sonic needs some power retuning -- Liquefy, for example, just pails compared to a lot of lower level powers from other specs - and the end drain for support is pretty taxing early on (their attacks need some power discounts built in, I'd wager - to encourage more blasting [ more fun] without affecting the rest of their role.  

 

I also think FF//Sonic could use some graphical adjustments, preferably taking some of the other bubble graphics and making them into options for FF/Sonic -> specifically thinking the paragon shields FFs looking a million times better than "bubbles."  Also need to add some distinction between Controller and Defenders, as if people don't wanna blast they tend to go the controller route, which adds a lot more survivability than the blasts from defender; either nerf controller secondary mods, or some damage changes for Defenders would be a good idea.

 

Dominators lack that extra defensives, so maybe start to incentives Doms for attacking - like adding +mag stacks to self or something for attacks so they can get stronger holds if they attack more. Also, perma-dom should be more accessible, which would help a lot for people wanting to get into Dom (a dom with perma dom vs not with perma dom is a HUGE difference - to the point where I won't even a play a dom until I get enough gear for it to get perma dom these days). ALso some sets need some re-design to be more dom friendly (Look at Savage dom secondary usage -- it just doesn't work as a Dom Secondary). 

 

Stalker is pretty screwed, even though they reached a point of high damage, they're just a different style of play than the rest of the game. Not sure if that should be changed, as it's pretty Niche -- but the clunkiness of their assassinate is probably what I'd target. It could be made to feel much more fun/engaging if we get that working nicely... Perhaps make them all NINJA VANISHES/Ranged abilities that you can channel into the teleport with a much shorter cooldown so you can start bamfing all over the place... (which btw a teleporting spec for Stalkers would be sweet, lol)

 

As for the Soldiers/Widows/PBs/Warshades… well, PBs and warshades are a bit too complex for the every-day player, and they just need to be buffed up in the individual roles (similar to what wow did to hybrids) - some specialization passives would be nice -- like a power that makes you much tankier/etc at the cost of doing less damage/nerfing you outside of that form -- so that if you want to play a "Tank" version of a Kheldian, you can do that rather than just being a neutered tanker. The time has come to make them into actual classes rather than forcing the hybrid (which could be argued is their point, but it's obviously not working - despite the inherit flaw that those types of ATs always suffer from due to not being part of the main set of roles).

 

Soldiers and Widows... are very niche in their fun aspects. Hell, I'd even wager you might want to just keep them as "Classic Widow/Classic Soldier" and then add a 3rd option for them both when they pick a spec that has some of their own/interesting powers, as being a team buffbot with toggles and looking to get level 12 powers as your lv32 power is pretty lackluster.

 

We'll never see these play rates change except slight fluctuations unless  we start making some steps to fill the holes that we KNOW exist and have always existed. 

 

[PartyKake]

People: "There are too many blasters."

 

Also people:

 

[Without_Pause]

22 hours ago, seresibyl2 said:

So the question is, what do we do this data? We've seen several changes to Brutes etc but their overall play compared to some of the other classes is staggering (including Fiery aura, even outside of the farmers, it just goes up...)

Power gamers are going to exists. You can nerf one set or buff another and people will just move to what power games the best. Do we really want something like a Ice/ff controller farming at the speed of a Rad/fire brute? Is that the ideal of everyone can do everything equally? I honestly prefer how various ATs and builds serve different purposes.  FYI, partly due to me not taking a control power in my epic, soloing my Spines/fire to unlock the Patron Power Pool was one of the most painful things I have done in game and that includes soloing defenders and lower level controllers to where I simply auto completed the mission on one controller.

[seresibyl2]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

Power gamers are going to exists. You can nerf one set or buff another and people will just move to what power games the best. Do we really want something like a Ice/ff controller farming at the speed of a Rad/fire brute? Is that the ideal of everyone can do everything equally? I honestly prefer how various ATs and builds serve different purposes.  FYI, partly due to me not taking a control power in my epic, soloing my Spines/fire to unlock the Patron Power Pool was one of the most painful things I have done in game and that includes soloing defenders and lower level controllers to where I simply auto completed the mission on one controller.

 

Power gamers are fine; the disparity though is staggering. It's a super hero game, though at the end of the day-- which helps lead to why brutes/tankers are so popular - being unkillable with high damage is pretty fun for people. That being said, it doesn't mean the others have to be equal, it just needs to be balanced a bit more. Nerfing isn't fun for people playing those (which is a LOT of people lol), so buffing to feel "as fun" in the strength department is a good tool to use.

 

While fun is subjective, being weak is not necessarily fun for a large majority of people. Do I think a Defender should solo as fast as a brute? Nah, that can be a strength of the brute -- but it shouldn't be 100-0... 😛 Anyone with a defensive set 50 (FF, Sonic, etc) feels the drop off in usefulness in groups that are already def/res capped without them.... 😕