Focused Feedback: New IO Sets (Release Candidates)

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, Caulderone said:

The patch notes in the other IO thread list Call of the Sandman's heal proc as now being unique.  This is verifiable in game in the /AH.

 

The patch notes above list the Power Transfer Chance of Self Heal as being Unique, too.  But, in game, it lacks the Unique tag.  Is it supposed to be unique or not?  I can't tell if the notes are wrong or the IO is.

Patch notes are wrong, it shouldn’t be unique 🙂

[LQT]

On 3/13/2020 at 11:36 PM, Jimmy said:

Artillery (Targeted AoE, Rare, 30-50)

Is Artillery going active as a rare set or uncommon?

 

Atm there are 2 UC sets [10-50, 20-50], 2 rares [both 20-50], the purple [50], the pvp [10-50] and the 2 winters [10+, 50] for tAoEs, and given how similar Artillery is to now looking as an tAoE Thunderstike [UC 30-50], would it not be more suitable to match this as an UC set instead of rare?

[Caulderone]

55 minutes ago, LQT said:

Is Artillery going active as a rare set or uncommon?

In the /AH on the beta, all of the Artillery recipes are yellow.  So, I think it is uncommon.  Hard to say for sure as the recipes don't show components on beta.

Bombardment is all orange, so rare.

[Jimmy]

That's a mistake in the patch notes - just fixed. Thanks!

[WindDemon21]

Can you also please make all sets at least 20-50.

[AustinSmith]

I’m kinda glad Artillery got split off from Bombardment, because it looks like a fantastic set for getting ranged def capped on many blaster builds and the like. But now it feels like Bombardment is in an awkward place, since it’s so similar in set bonuses to Positrons Blast, which in turn is a depowered version of Ragnarok.

 

Bombardment with its current numbers trades recovery for a range bonus, trades F/C resistance for equivalent S/L resistance, has a lower accuracy buff, a lower recharge buff, and trades T/P resistance for an equal amount of E/N resistance.

 

With the only real tradeoff being an additional .5 PPM in its damage proc, and the IO enhancement bonuses shifted around, it doesn’t make for a very interesting set in its current iteration.

[Bopper]

5 minutes ago, AustinSmith said:

 

With the only real tradeoff being an additional .5 PPM in its damage proc, and the IO enhancement bonuses shifted around, it doesn’t make for a very interesting set in its current iteration.

They're both 3.5 PPM procs. Is it still showing at 3 PPM? If so, it should be a typo.

 

Although the set bonuses may seem similar to Positrons Blast, the enhancements themselves are very different. You get much more balance with Bombardment 

[AustinSmith]

8 hours ago, Bopper said:

They're both 3.5 PPM procs. Is it still showing at 3 PPM? If so, it should be a typo.

 

Although the set bonuses may seem similar to Positrons Blast, the enhancements themselves are very different. You get much more balance with Bombardment 

Yeah you're right, I was working off memory there, both procs are 3.5 PPM. Which to me, still doesn't excuse Bombardment's lackluster set bonuses.

 

Now that I'm not typing on a phone and I'm back on my PC, I can compare and contrast the set bonuses more:

 

At 2 slotted: PB grants 2.5% recovery, and Bombardment grants 5% range increase. Okay, good start, but tier 1 set bonuses are rarely important.

At 3 slotted: Both PB and Bombardment grant 2.25% damage resistance bonus (PB does Fire/Cold, Bombardment does Smashing/Lethal) and some mez resistance. A bit of overlap, but okay.

At 4 slotted: PB grants a 9% accuracy buff, and Bombardment a 7% accuracy buff. Well, Bombardment is a clear loser here. Let's see if the next tier is better.

At 5 slotted: PB grants a 6.25% recharge bonus, and Bombardment a 5% recharge bonus. Fourth and fifth tier are usually pretty important set bonuses, since you're devoting a lot of slots at this point for these bonuses. Bombardment is still a loser here, it's just strictly worse. Maybe the final tier makes up for it?

At 6 slotted: Both PB and Bombardment grant 4.5% damage resistance bonus (PB does Toxic/Psionic, Bombardment does Energy/NegEn) and some mez resistance. There really isn't any improvement here (and I'd argue that toxic/psionic resistance is more valuable than en/negen, but let's discount that) to make up for the fact that the third and fourth tier bonuses are STRICTLY WORSE than Positron's Blast.

 

They're both rare Targeted AoE enhancements with a 3.5PPM damage proc as the "special" slot. To me, there's nothing interesting about Bombardment that makes me want to take and slot it over Positron's Blast. I'm raising the point that the set bonuses between these two, VERY similar enhancements, should be diversified in some way. Either granting defense at the fifth tier (prolly not as strong as the original design, however), or swapping places between the recharge and accuracy bonuses maybe?

 

The short of it is, there's nothing about this enhancement that makes me want to use it when Positron's Blast exists.

[Bopper]

18 minutes ago, AustinSmith said:

The short of it is, there's nothing about this enhancement that makes me want to use it when Positron's Blast exists

You're generally right that the set bonuses compared in a vacuum would seem to favor Positron's Blast (which may depend on your preference between having S/L/E/N resistance vs. F/C/T/P resistance).

 

The thing you have to remember is the set bonuses will depend on the enhancement strengths. Compare the sets with 6 slots of Level 50 IOs: 

 

Bombardment

Accuracy: 61%

Damage: 96.3%

Recharge:  85.7%

End Cost: 39.7%

 

Positron's Blast

Accuracy: 47.7%

Damage: 99.1%

Recharge:  26.5%

End Cost: 47.7%

Range:  15.9%

 

Again, this may depend on your preference, but Bombardment gives you much more enhanced recharge, while providing more accuracy as well, at the cost of a little bit of damage and also endurance reduction.

 

Honestly, they are rather even. And as you said, a person's preference will likely be weighted by the flavors of set bonuses and whether or not they want more recharge/accuracy in the power, or if they want more range/endurance. Personally, I would probably prefer Positron's Blast too...but they are so close it will depend on my build needs.

[AustinSmith]

2 hours ago, Bopper said:

Honestly, they are rather even. And as you said, a person's preference will likely be weighted by the flavors of set bonuses and whether or not they want more recharge/accuracy in the power, or if they want more range/endurance. Personally, I would probably prefer Positron's Blast too...but they are so close it will depend on my build needs.

See, that's my biggest gripe here...that the set bonuses are SO CLOSE together. There's almost no difference between the two in terms of set bonuses except for tier 1 and resistance typing.

 

Is the substantial bonus to one power's recharge really worth a Praetorian clone of Positron's Blast? I'd argue not. There's so much other design space that could be explored, or even numbers just tweaked slightly, just to make them different.

 

It just kinda sucks to see a new, rare IO set being added to the game, and it's not that it's bad, it's boring.

[Bopper]

13 minutes ago, AustinSmith said:

See, that's my biggest gripe here...that the set bonuses are SO CLOSE together. There's almost no difference between the two in terms of set bonuses except for tier 1 and resistance typing.

 

Is the substantial bonus to one power's recharge really worth a Praetorian clone of Positron's Blast? I'd argue not. There's so much other design space that could be explored, or even numbers just tweaked slightly, just to make them different.

 

It just kinda sucks to see a new, rare IO set being added to the game, and it's not that it's bad, it's boring.

It's fair criticism. And the original version of Bombardment had ranged defense in the 6th slot, but was deemed too OP of a combo when paired with recharge bonus, so we received a 2nd TAoE set in Artillery that took the ranged defense while Bombardment had its 6th slot changed to AoE defense. But it was argued AoE (and F/C) defense were already abundant in the game and E/N resistance was unrepresented, so that won out as a 6th spot. So that's about 6 builds worth of summary for you, just in case you didnt want to go through all the threads.

 

Now, I'd argue S/L/E/N resistance is far more useful that F/C/T/P resistance just in terms of frequency in the game. Also, I know many ranged ATs will try to build for S/L/E defense, so having S/L/E resistance would certainly appeal to them. 

 

That being said...maybe you'll like Artillery. No procs, but it's a better version of Thunderstrike. 

Edited March 26, 2020 by Bopper

[Parabola]

I kind of agree about bombardment being a little lacklustre now. Yes it has more recharge enhancement than posi's blast now but builds generally have so much global recharge that it rarely matters. If I have a long recharge taoe such as a nuke it's getting an ato or purple set that offer more recharge anyway. And the resist bonus for six slotting is ... eh. I have recently built a dark tank which in the whole game is probably the character most wanting to patch up an energy hole and it was far simpler to just softcap e/n defence than mess about with resistance. I still think s/l defence in the sixth slot would have been more generally useful.

 

Artillery is looking decent. I'd have given it a +range bonus as well for both the utility and the theme of it. At least it's a set I can see myself using, bombardment just doesn't make the grade unfortunately.

[Laenan]

12 hours ago, AustinSmith said:

See, that's my biggest gripe here...that the set bonuses are SO CLOSE together. There's almost no difference between the two in terms of set bonuses except for tier 1 and resistance typing.

 

Is the substantial bonus to one power's recharge really worth a Praetorian clone of Positron's Blast? I'd argue not. There's so much other design space that could be explored, or even numbers just tweaked slightly, just to make them different.

 

It just kinda sucks to see a new, rare IO set being added to the game, and it's not that it's bad, it's boring.

May I file a petition to change the set name to Antimatter's Blast?

[AustinSmith]

1 hour ago, Laenan said:

May I file a petition to change the set name to Antimatter's Blast?

See, I was going to coin that name in my other posts, but I didn’t want to sound TOO snarky.

 

Bombardment went from being the most eye-catching set in its first iteration to the most disappointing.

[Galaxy Brain]

Am I reading this right, or is power transfer non unique?

[Bopper]

30 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Am I reading this right, or is power transfer non unique?

No longer unique, since it can't proc more than once. 

[Galaxy Brain]

19 minutes ago, Bopper said:

No longer unique, since it can't proc more than once. 

Well now I have some build ideas 👀

[oedipus_tex]

Looks good IMO.

 

I still wish Synapse's Shock had more damage. But I promised I'd let it drop after making my case, and it seems like you've made a decision, so I'll honor your choice.

 

That heal proc in Power Transfer. I need to think about how I can abuse that. It's too bad Gremlins don't take End Mod sets, altho they should since they take normal End Mod enhancers. I'm betting it's really useful in Jolting Chain. I'll need to try it. 

[Hjarki]

42 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

That heal proc in Power Transfer. I need to think about how I can abuse that. It's too bad Gremlins don't take End Mod sets, altho they should since they take normal End Mod enhancers. I'm betting it's really useful in Jolting Chain. I'll need to try it. 

I don't believe there's really any way to 'abuse it' beyond the conventional ones. Jolting Chain should act just like a single target attack. But I think it really boils down to the fact that, no matter what you do with it, it's still just a minor heal. I suppose you could just toss it in Stamina and let it tick away, but normally this sort of 'regen' just isn't very useful.

 

Overall, I haven't found either of the damage/endurance sets to have much use. They don't have any key bonuses that would make 2- or 3- slotting them worthwhile. The bonuses at 5- and 6- are decent but not particularly inspiring. Splitting across end mod alongside more conventional features like recharge, damage and accuracy means they end up being bad at everything. I think there's also the "stop trying to make fetch a thing" factor here. There just aren't many powers that are both good at damage and end mod (Thunderous Blast is the only one I can think of). Indeed, damage and end mod are opposing concepts - if you can just kill something, you have no reason to drain its endurance.

 

Pre-emptive Optimization I have found useful. Non-damaging end drain powers do exist and this is a better set than exists currently.

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

That heal proc in Power Transfer. I need to think about how I can abuse that. It's too bad Gremlins don't take End Mod sets, altho they should since they take normal End Mod enhancers. I'm betting it's really useful in Jolting Chain. I'll need to try it.

Unfortunately the chaining powers actually created a new pseudo pet after each enemy so you dont get the proc bonus if it goes off in the chain only for the initial hit.

 

And yes there are a ton of powers that need to allow the lol proper IO sets. That's one of them, as is singularly taking hold/imm/ranged damage sets, and quicksand taking defense debuff sets etc.