Titan Weapons Discussion

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, Infinitum said:

But is toning down damage on the tank side the answer? Because TW didnt get any increases from the tank patch right?

This is a situation where different versions of a set, or at least different values need to be at play. On Scrappers and Brutes, TW definitely outshines tons of other sets. But on Tankers they have drastically different attacks with their ranges and targets being different that it is hard to say TW is still the absolute top dog.

[Vanden]

37 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

With large scale changes on the horizon, these concerns need to be voiced now, not later when it's half committed already

Until you know what the changes are, you’re just shouting at the sky. You don’t even know that the changes are actually large-scale, you’ve just convinced yourself they are.

[Infinitum]

10 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Until you know what the changes are, you’re just shouting at the sky. You don’t even know that the changes are actually large-scale, you’ve just convinced yourself they are.

How would you define the word Significant?  Cause thats what CP described the changes to TW as.

 

There was a lot of Vagueries thrown around that probably shouldnt have been if there were not going to be details provided otherwise its going to lead to what people are fretting about.

 

If nothing was said, the last 5 pages dont happen.

 

Now, myself... on the other hand... Im designing an EM/invul build with breath held that it ends up very good again.  🙂

Edited March 15, 2020 by Infinitum

[Galaxy Brain]

Since we have a new thread, I want to say that I still would like TW to be a top performer when nerfed. The issue is that it is currently *the* tip-top by a big gap for Scrapper and Brutes, incomparable to other top sets in that it out ST damages, out AoE damages, and even out safety's a good chunk of the competition. It's downside is that it requires much more attention and player-stamina to use than say, Spines or Rad Melee, and as such combined with higher end costs and a slow start can be off putting. 

 

What I would like to see is more leniency on TW in exchange for less top end performance. 

 

Lower the damage dealt by (10%) per power, but also reduce the end cost by (10%) as well. TW attacks currently deal between 18-44% more damage than they should according to the normal damage formulas, cutting into that (make it 9-22%?) And giving it back and end discount would go a long way.

 

Take Defensive Sweep, the T1 that acts as an AoE parry, and normalize its animation. It currently iirc animates in 2.2 sec or 1sec, make it always 1.6 sec and be unaffected by momentum. It can still grant it, but it also gives TW a generally faster (but still a bit slow, and lower damage) option for new players.

 

 

 

 

[Septipheran]

Oh wow, I've accidentally started the nerf Titan Weapons thread. This was bound to happen eventually. Carry on.

[ABlueThingy]

So, if when they do finally nerf TW are all the people that say "You can't fix this, it's not as bad as TW!" or "Why are you doing X when TW is still OP!?" going to just be like "OK, nerf away"?

[Caulderone]

27 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Lower the damage dealt by (10%) per power, but also reduce the end cost by (10%) as well. TW attacks currently deal between 18-44% more damage than they should according to the normal damage formulas, cutting into that (make it 9-22%?) And giving it back and end discount would go a long way.

I don't have a dog in this show, as I have never built a TW anything.

 

My question is simple.  Now that TW isn't a P2W set sold for profit, why should it get to keep being outside the stock damage/end/rech formula at all?

Note:  I'm not saying it should or should not.  I just don't see why it shouldn't be normalized, and would be interested to hear reasons.

[Galaxy Brain]

I can post numbers a little later (got the flu, my energy is in and out lol), but the idea must have been to help the initial slow swings by having extra damage.

[ABlueThingy]

Just now, Caulderone said:

I don't have a dog in this show, as I have never built a TW anything.

 

My question is simple.  Now that TW isn't a P2W set sold for profit, why should it get to keep being outside the stock damage/end/rech formula at all?

Note:  I'm not saying it should or should not.  I just don't see why it shouldn't be normalized, and would be interested to hear reasons.

Well, the general answer is that this is the set's schtick.

 

All it's attacks are AoEs that are balanced as ST attacks.  So they do stupid damage.  That breaks the formula

 

However it's suppose to be balanced by the Momentum mechanic and VERY high end costs. 

 

I think if they just undo Posi's last second change to the set it would be fine.  Where he was like "Guys the set is fine, it doesn't need a buff.  If we buff it, it will be stupid OP" and people wouldn't shut up and he couldn't justify a pay-for set with press that bad.  So he buffed it and... well

 

At least that's how I remember it...I wonder if the patch history still exists.  It was something like... he extended the Momentum duration for an extra 2 seconds and that pushed us to where we are today

[Infinitum]

6 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

I don't have a dog in this show, as I have never built a TW anything.

 

My question is simple.  Now that TW isn't a P2W set sold for profit, why should it get to keep being outside the stock damage/end/rech formula at all?

Note:  I'm not saying it should or should not.  I just don't see why it shouldn't be normalized, and would be interested to hear reasons.

I dont have a TW anything anymore or plan to either, but ive seen this movie before.  I'm not a fan of TW either way, but I dont have an issue with it being OP either.  Most people I know that take it usually abandon it by lvl 30 because it honestly sucks for most of the early levels.  I'm not a fan of the arcadey feel of it either.

 

The biggest problem I have always had with it and a few of these other changes lately is its not really breaking anything in game, and we have no insight as to what their long term vision for what they want the game to be like anyway - just put it out there or develop one if it doesnt exist yet.

 

Theres not runaway picks of this set over others outside of the bio combination in scrappers and that's it, maybe adjustment to TW should start there as most of the stupid tw tricks usually involve bio.

 

Literally the only reason to change it, is just to say you changed it in the name of balance.  Is that worth alienating any part of the player base?

 

I also do understand why you would want to balance it, but is "want to" the same thing as "have to" at the risk of unnecessarily pissing off people that play it?  Or any of these nerfs for that reason.

 

I'm of the mindset of meh leave it alone if its not hurting anything.

 

I hardly ever see TW players in game as it is, and I don't see anything out of whack with them being so far ahead of me in terms of being OP.

 

As I have said before if it is needed I hope the EM approach is not taken.

[ABlueThingy]

3 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

...

The biggest problem I have always had with it and a few of these other changes lately is its not really breaking anything in game, and we have no insight as to what their long term vision for what they want the game to be like anyway - just put it out there or develop one if it doesnt exist yet.

 

Theres not runaway picks of this set over others outside of the bio combination in scrappers and that's it, maybe adjustment to TW should start there as most of the stupid tw tricks usually involve bio.

 

Literally the only reason to change it, is just to say you changed it in the name of balance.  Is that worth alienating any part of the player base?

 

I also do understand why you would want to balance it, but is "want to" the same thing as "have to" at the risk of unnecessarily pissing off people that play it?  Or any of these nerfs for that reason.

 

I'm of the mindset of meh leave it alone if its not hurting anything.

...

 

It looks like, to me, the Homecoming team is trying to gut and rearrange the bowels of CoH's backend into something coherent so that it can be stable and easy to update.  This is part of what they said they were doing during The Dark Times™.  It's a long and arduous process and it looks awful when being preformed on a live game with people in it.

 

The Pseudo-Pet change is a good one I think, that was a nasty bit of kludge to make the game work.  With time and care I'm sure a better method can be devised.  I mean, even the OG Devs came up with better ways.  They just didn't have the ability/time to back port them to the older sets.  Now that we do... we should.  CoH's code is a NIGHTMARE of random hardcoded info, tables that bleed everywhere.  I remember one time they changed something about Cape physics and it broke the tram system back in the live game.

 

How? Why?  God knows.  But cleaning up all this code, making it make SENSE so you can track problems and actually fix them instead of building elaborate work-arounds should be the goal.

 

Buuuuut.  You end up with weird consequences. Cleaning up the AT mods and Psudopets means some powers are losing or gaining relative strength. Not necessarily because they think the powers are OP or UP or anything.  They are just now reset to a baseline, universal, rule. Now if Controller /Dark or Corr /Dark are doing poorly... you can change them.  THAT is worth the nerf, I feel. 

 

GOING BACK TO THE BEFORE TIMES...

 

TAR PATCH. Also Twilight's Grasp, but Tar is easier to talk about because it has a single nice round number.  Assuming you ignore the -speed. Which I am.

 

Tar Patch was just always -20% res for everyone, no AT mods. Because it actually summoned a static pet that cast the real "tar patch." When you cast Controller/Dark/Tarpatch it summoned "Tarpatch.pet" which was a specific NPC that cast "Tarpatch debuff aura."  If you cast Defender/Dark/Tarpatch it summoned "Tarpatch.pet" which-- etc.  For every PC and NPC that cast it.  Didn't matter what version of the power you cast, you always summoned the same tarpatch.pet.  Now later on they did find ways to make it so each AT summoned their own version of the pet but that was by STARTING with that assumption and building it that way from the base.

 

It's much harder to go and un-code the original stuff.  It's not as easy as just making a new TarpatchDEF.pet and rewiring Def to summon that new one.  I mean, you could.  But then any NPC that was using the Def version would ALSO summon this new pet. So you'd have to go through and alter them to use a new pet.  And the new pets all have to call on new powers with modified stats.  And this is true for every psudopet they didn't make exceptions for.  Which was... all of the original ones.

 

So when the time DID come for that and they had Corruptor and MM who were going to get this new power.  They had to decide if they wanted to go through and prune and clean all the Psudopets to force them into having AT mods(They couldn't actually make them respect AT mods they would just manually adjust the numbers) or just... screw it.  It wasn't THAT big of a deal at the time.  And making new versions of the pet meant more crap code tangled across a dozen tables, diagnosing any issues would be hard.  You'd have to dig through all these redundant copies of the power.  And it just... wasn't worth it.

 

I remember this argument though.  I had played a Dark Def and a Robo/Dark MM.  The fourms complained quite a bit that it kind of made Defender versions of Dark feel kinda crappy, all the powers should obey the AT mods or else what is the point.  My Dark MM's buffs/debuffs were just mostly the same as my Defender's.  But the MM had three times the damage, easily.  But at that point Posi had said... they can't buff the Def version of Tar Patch.  It's literally the same power as MM and Corr versions.  You buff one you buff all. (also all the NPC versions).

 

(this is why the suggestion to just buff the Def version is misunderstanding the issue... until now they couldn't do that)

 

So we all just kinda... bleh, fiiiine.  At the time "Psudopet" was the dev's "A wizard did it."  It kind of trumped all balance discussions.  "Why is TA garbo?" "A wizard did it."

 

Homecoming has made it so now all versions of Dark Miasma can be more easily balanced individually.  AND without making a bunch of stupid clone powers, it looks like.  But that means that all the Tar Patches and Twilight Grasps snapped back to AT mod shape, a nerf for most.  If they need to be buffed individually now they can be.  Like, I don't think Any */Dark MMs are going to really suffer.  But maybe */Dark Corrs will need help.  Now you can fix one without breaking the other.

 

At least, I think.  I've not seen what changes they made to the code.

 

 

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

I've added a page to my Melee Set comparison sheet called "TW vs WM" for this comparison:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W6KAQFJwSP44hd1MHJiPPYCw4yFetHvTomfbMQR3z2M/edit#gid=1160580221

 

It's the last page if anyone wants more detailed info.

 

 

The closest set to TW is probably WM in terms of a direct comparison. Both are heavy, Smashing Weapons sets that feature multiple cones, knockdowns, and are famous for big DPA. Lets see how they compare:

 

 

At base lvls for Scrappers:

• War Mace costs 11% less Endurance per attack on average.
• War Mace animates 27% faster on average outside of Momentum.
• With Momentum, TW animates 61% faster on average.
• Without momentum, TW has about 19% more DPA than War Mace on average.
• With momentum, this skyrockets to 105% more DPA.
• Under the assumption that Momentum can only be a factor about 80% of the time, I averaged this down to about a 42% lead.

 

So, TW only costs 11% more endurance but probably dishes out 42% more damage than WM on average. However, this does not include the DoT of 2 TW powers, and the -Res from Rend Armor! TW also has 9-10ft melee range where WM has 7-8ft, and it's PBAoE is a 15ft radius compared to WM's 8ft.

 

The 11% end per swing adds up tho, as you are also technically attacking much faster than WM is... so it's really more like 25% more end cost / time. Even still, that doesn't close the gap between the damage values.

 

So, there are a few things we can tweak with TW:

 

1. Change the raw damage it deals
2. Change the Activation times of the powers
3. Change the duration of momentum

 

Any of those could work to make the set feel much better all around and bring it closer to parity with other top performers. 

 

 

 

[Haijinx]

29 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I've added a page to my Melee Set comparison sheet called "TW vs WM" for this comparison:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W6KAQFJwSP44hd1MHJiPPYCw4yFetHvTomfbMQR3z2M/edit#gid=1160580221

 

It's the last page if anyone wants more detailed info.

 

 

The closest set to TW is probably WM in terms of a direct comparison. Both are heavy, Smashing Weapons sets that feature multiple cones, knockdowns, and are famous for big DPA. Lets see how they compare:

 

 

At base lvls for Scrappers:

• War Mace costs 11% less Endurance per attack on average.
• War Mace animates 27% faster on average outside of Momentum.
• With Momentum, TW animates 61% faster on average.
• Without momentum, TW has about 19% more DPA than War Mace on average.
• With momentum, this skyrockets to 105% more DPA.
• Under the assumption that Momentum can only be a factor about 80% of the time, I averaged this down to about a 42% lead.

 

So, TW only costs 11% more endurance but probably dishes out 42% more damage than WM on average. However, this does not include the DoT of 2 TW powers, and the -Res from Rend Armor! TW also has 9-10ft melee range where WM has 7-8ft, and it's PBAoE is a 15ft radius compared to WM's 8ft.

 

The 11% end per swing adds up tho, as you are also technically attacking much faster than WM is... so it's really more like 25% more end cost / time. Even still, that doesn't close the gap between the damage values.

 

So, there are a few things we can tweak with TW:

 

1. Change the raw damage it deals
2. Change the Activation times of the powers
3. Change the duration of momentum

 

Any of those could work to make the set feel much better all around and bring it closer to parity with other top performers. 

 

 

 

War Mace is probably on the edge of the Best Performance but still a normal set.

 

TW is something else

[nihilii]

On 3/14/2020 at 9:42 PM, Veracor said:

I hope when it comes to TW nerfs, you mostly hit the set on Scrappers and Bio / Offensive Adaptation, because TW is nowhere near as broken on Brute and Tanker as it is on Scrapper (and especially on Tanker, because we taunt and spend some of our Momentum time on repositioning).

This is a choice you're making and not a flaw of TW on Tankers specifically. My own TW tankers (SR/TW and DA/TW, so still a magnitude less broken than Bio/TW) deal absurd levels of damage, close to a regular highend scrapper, because they don't use Taunt nor spend time repositioning; essentially, they're ridiculously survivable scrappers who make no damage tradeoff.

While it's true scrappers are the worst offenders because of the insane Momentum + Follow Through + Critical Strikes proc synergy, nonetheless there isn't really a performance reason to play anything other than TW on any of the ATs with access to TW. The gap is sizeable, even on Tankers and Brutes. You might pick another attack powerset and with an extreme build, push it to where it almost meets TW in one of three aspects (ST damage, AOE damage or -res debuffing), but a TW build of similar skill will retain top performance in all three of these aspects at once.

Edited March 15, 2020 by nihilii

[Infinitum]

8 hours ago, nihilii said:

nonetheless there isn't really a performance reason to play anything other than TW on any of the ATs with access to TW. The gap is sizeable, even on Tankers and Brutes.

Yet it's barely in the top 10 in brute and barely in the top 20 in tanker.

 

I think one of the things you have to look at when considering the Balance of TW is it takes staying power and skill to play, because it's not a runaway favorite on anything but TW bio on Scrappers.

 

And those are facts from the march by the numbers post.

 

And even on Scrappers outside of bio it's barely in the top 20 there.

 

So basically it's not a popular set outside of 1 niche category involving bio armor.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Infinitum

[nihilii]

25 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Yet it's barely in the top 10 in brute and barely in the top 20 in tanker.

?

It's the #5 most popular attack powerset on both Brutes and Tankers. Out of the more popular powersets, Spines and Rad are notoriously overplayed due to AE farming, and SS is overplayed due to theme... and due to being too strong, even if we've had pages of people pretending otherwise in the temptative Rage change topics. 😛

Considering how cumbersome TW is, I find it actually easy to read these stats as a strong signal TW is overpowered.

 

Not that popularity should be brought into this, anyway. TW is unbalanced mechanically. I agree it's easier for players into game mechanics to get more dramatic performance out of it, but it's always worth remembering TW powers without any Momentum are competitive with good powers from regular damage powersets, so *any* Momentum is just bonus DPS.

 

(Frankly, I wish Momentum had never been a thing. Without Momentum, the performance between minmaxers and regular joes would be smoothed out as on regular powersets. TW could have had animations in the halfway point between their unaccelerated times and their Momentum length, somewhere around 1.8s to 2.2s for each. The set would have still been the top performer but not by such a wide margin, and it would be more fun to play - granted, that last part is subjective.)

I actually agree with your previous point /bio is also overpowered. That doesn't give TW a free pass. A TW scrapper that is not bio will outdamage any non-TW scrapper that is bio. The same mostly holds true for Brutes and Tankers, even if the gap is smaller there (mostly thanks to SS existing).

[Infinitum]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

?

It's the #5 most popular attack powerset on both Brutes and Tankers. Out of the more popular powersets, Spines and Rad are notoriously overplayed due to AE farming, and SS is overplayed due to theme... and due to being too strong, even if we've had pages of people pretending otherwise in the temptative Rage change topics. 😛

Considering how cumbersome TW is, I find it actually easy to read these stats as a strong signal TW is overpowered.

 

Not that popularity should be brought into this, anyway. TW is unbalanced mechanically. I agree it's easier for players into game mechanics to get more dramatic performance out of it, but it's always worth remembering TW powers without any Momentum are competitive with good powers from regular damage powersets, so *any* Momentum is just bonus DPS.

 

(Frankly, I wish Momentum had never been a thing. Without Momentum, the performance between minmaxers and regular joes would be smoothed out as on regular powersets. TW could have had animations in the halfway point between their unaccelerated times and their Momentum length, somewhere around 1.8s to 2.2s for each. The set would have still been the top performer but not by such a wide margin, and it would be more fun to play - granted, that last part is subjective.)

I actually agree with your previous point /bio is also overpowered. That doesn't give TW a free pass. A TW scrapper that is not bio will outdamage any non-TW scrapper that is bio. The same mostly holds true for Brutes and Tankers, even if the gap is smaller there (mostly thanks to SS existing).

Break it down to primary secondary sets chose and that's where the numbers are.

 

Not saying it gets a free pass but it's not as widely chosen as it first appears.

 

That's brutes

 

That's Scrappers

 

That's tanks - looky looky bio again.

 

If you look at it further you can almost see what was going through people's minds. Like how many people that picked a TW SR.  Or dark armor combo threw their hands up like what was I thinking.  lol

 

That's why Galaxy Brains proposal to do a swap -10% damage for +10% endurance is a pretty good one that could see a better variance in choices that can actually work in combo with the set.

[nihilii]

You're looking at the numbers for a specific combination here, instead of the overall numbers of characters with the powerset (which you can see further above in the stats topic).

If anything, the disparity between how often TW is picked overall versus how high a specific TW combo ranks against other specific powerset combos goes against your point: while other powersets are more often played with thematic pairings or perceived power builds, on Brutes and Tankers TW is spread onto a variety of powersets because it's so strong regardless of the powerset it's tied to.

TW is overpowered and popular on any AT, and likely popular because overpowered; but in any case, I stand by the position popularity has no relevance when a powerset is so mechanically overpowered it's trivial to show it as such.

[warlyx]

1 hour ago, Infinitum said:

That's why Galaxy Brains proposal to do a swap -10% damage for +10% endurance is a pretty good one that could see a better variance in choices that can actually work in combo with the set.

yeah a change of dmg for end is fine.

Edited March 16, 2020 by warlyx

[Infinitum]

37 minutes ago, nihilii said:

You're looking at the numbers for a specific combination here, instead of the overall numbers of characters with the powerset (which you can see further above in the stats topic).

If anything, the disparity between how often TW is picked overall versus how high a specific TW combo ranks against other specific powerset combos goes against your point: while other powersets are more often played with thematic pairings or perceived power builds, on Brutes and Tankers TW is spread onto a variety of powersets because it's so strong regardless of the powerset it's tied to.

TW is overpowered and popular on any AT, and likely popular because overpowered; but in any case, I stand by the position popularity has no relevance when a powerset is so mechanically overpowered it's trivial to show it as such.

It doesnt go against my point.  In fact if you take out the bio numbers its borderline irrelevant as what people are choosing because that places it middle of the road at best.

 

You cant ignore those numbers, because there is no primary without a secondary and synergies do matter and thats what these numbers show.

 

Bio boosts dmg and end which is the perfect platform for TW.  Other popular choices were fiery aura - extra damage boost +end, electric armor - +end, radiation - +end debuffs, and willpower - +end.  Once you get past those the numbers drop off to irrelevance.

[skoryy]

'TW is OP because the spreadsheet says so' misses that TW isn't that OP in actual practice.  Beyond the endurance issues limiting the build to certain armors, also consider the lost momentum time due to positioning, missing on the momentum swing, and everyone and their grandmother toting AOEs which wipe out the spawn before you've finished your momentum swing.   The level 50 tallies tell more of the truth, its rare that I'll see another TW in the wild.

 

I'm curious to see what the Cap has planned, TW can still use a little care.

[Frosticus]

TW is actually the most endurance efficient attack set (maybe more so than claws)... on paper.

In reality it can crush your blue bar almost as fast as it crushes EB's. 

 

I gave up on my tw/fire scrapper at 46. Momentum causes hit strikes to land at the wrong times (hello whirling smash) and slow mode attacks feel ultra slow compared to the overly exaggerated hyper speed of momentum. It is so annoying that I won't even finish off a couple minions to help my team out when momentum drops. I just move on to the next spawn. 

 

I'd be inclined to play it if the set wasn't so bipolar. Maybe trim the slow animations and have momentum increase speed by like 40% instead of of the current 200%+ increase in speed that it has now on some attacks.

 

It's numerical advantages are vast. I find myself comparing every damage dealer I make to TW and ultimately falling short. My last several stalker projects have been specifically geared to unseat TW scrappers in st damage. Haven't gotten there. Stalkers are awesome though in and of themselves.

 

Bio Armor is currently tougher and adds more offense than Fire armor. While in offensive mode. Something needs to change.

The -res applied to yourself in offensive mode probably needs to be unresistable as it is meaningless once you factor in that your resistances resist it. 

Probably scrap the -res aura and just give it sleep or something (hey it's good enough for stalkers right?).

[nihilii]

4 hours ago, Infinitum said:

You cant ignore those numbers, because there is no primary without a secondary and synergies do matter and thats what these numbers show.

I'm not ignoring these numbers. I'm only arguing they demonstrate the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
 

There are 627 TW Tankers. #5 in Tanker secondary popularity.
 

116 Bio/TW (18.5%)
101 WP/TW (16.1%)
88 Invul/TW (14.0%)
87 Rad/TW (13.8%)
67 Stone/TW (10.6%)
57 Elec/TW (9.0%)
44 Dark/TW (7.0%)
32 FA/TW (5.0%)
23 Ice/TW (3.6%)
12 SR/TW (1.9%)

 

There are 618 ElM Tankers. #6 in Tanker secondary popularity.

 

167 Elec/ElM (27.0%)
150 Shield/ElM (23.9%)
67 Stone/ElM (10.8%)
54 Invul/ElM (8.7%)
41 Rad/ElM (6.6%)
36 FA/ElM (5.8%)
34 WP/ElM (5.5%)
30 DA/ElM (4.8%)
24 Bio/ElM (3.8%)
12 Ice/ElM (1.9%)
3 SR/ElM (0.4%)

There are 677 Spines Tankers, #4 in Tanker secondary popularity.

287 FA/Spines (42.3%)
114 Bio/Spines (16.8%)
75 Stone/Spines (11.0%)
51 Rad/Spines (7.5%)
36 DA/Spines (5.3%)
34 Ice/Spines (5.0%)
31 Invul/Spines (4.5%)
24 WP/Spines (3.5%)
22 Elec/Spines (3.2%)
3 SR/Spines (0.4%)

What trends can we see here?
1) more than half of all ElM and Spines Tankers are concentrated in the first two combos. On the other hand, it takes more than the first top three picks to get to the 50% mark with TW
2) when it comes to primaries with no end management and TW, invul ranks 3rd, stone 5th, DA 7th and SR 10th. With Spines, Stone ranks 3rd, DA 5th, Invul 7th and SR 10th. With ElM, Shield is 2nd (but TW and Spines can't use Shield, so we can't extrapolate where Shield/TW Tankers would land), Stone is 3rd, Invul 4th, DA 7th, SR 10th.
3) if we remove the obvious AE farm build that is FA/Spines from Spines ranking, we still see Bio/Spines as a much more popular option compared to other Spines primaries than Bio/TW is compared to other TW primaries. Bio/Spines' relative percentage ends up at 29.1% without FA/Spines, while Bio/TW is at 18.5%.

In conclusion, not only there's no evidence of a particular TW tendency to ignore most primaries in favor of a select few favoring end management; but in this comparison, the data suggests the opposite. TW enjoys a greater diversity of Tanker primaries than Spines and Elec.

 

Quote

In fact if you take out the bio numbers its borderline irrelevant as what people are choosing because that places it middle of the road at best.

The #7 Tanker secondary is Dark Melee, with 461 characters. If you take out ALL the 116 Bio/TW Tankers AND still keep Bio for all other Tanker secondaries, you're left with 511 TW Tankers, meaning TW loses only... one spot, to Elec Melee.

TW without Bio is still more popular than Dark Melee, Staff Fighting, Street Justice, Stone Melee, Energy Melee, Ice Melee, War Mace, Savage Melee, Psionic Melee, Broad Sword, Battle Axe, Martial Arts, Dual Blades, Kinetic Attack, Katana and Claws, and all of these WITH bio.

That is to say, TW without Bio still ranks #6 out of 22 in popularity.

 

Edited March 16, 2020 by nihilii

[Infinitum]

4 hours ago, nihilii said:

I'm not ignoring these numbers. I'm only arguing they demonstrate the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
 

There are 627 TW Tankers. #5 in Tanker secondary popularity.
 

116 Bio/TW (18.5%)
101 WP/TW (16.1%)
88 Invul/TW (14.0%)
87 Rad/TW (13.8%)
67 Stone/TW (10.6%)
57 Elec/TW (9.0%)
44 Dark/TW (7.0%)
32 FA/TW (5.0%)
23 Ice/TW (3.6%)
12 SR/TW (1.9%)

 

There are 618 ElM Tankers. #6 in Tanker secondary popularity.

 

167 Elec/ElM (27.0%)
150 Shield/ElM (23.9%)
67 Stone/ElM (10.8%)
54 Invul/ElM (8.7%)
41 Rad/ElM (6.6%)
36 FA/ElM (5.8%)
34 WP/ElM (5.5%)
30 DA/ElM (4.8%)
24 Bio/ElM (3.8%)
12 Ice/ElM (1.9%)
3 SR/ElM (0.4%)

There are 677 Spines Tankers, #4 in Tanker secondary popularity.

287 FA/Spines (42.3%)
114 Bio/Spines (16.8%)
75 Stone/Spines (11.0%)
51 Rad/Spines (7.5%)
36 DA/Spines (5.3%)
34 Ice/Spines (5.0%)
31 Invul/Spines (4.5%)
24 WP/Spines (3.5%)
22 Elec/Spines (3.2%)
3 SR/Spines (0.4%)

What trends can we see here?
1) more than half of all ElM and Spines Tankers are concentrated in the first two combos. On the other hand, it takes more than the first top three picks to get to the 50% mark with TW
2) when it comes to primaries with no end management and TW, invul ranks 3rd, stone 5th, DA 7th and SR 10th. With Spines, Stone ranks 3rd, DA 5th, Invul 7th and SR 10th. With ElM, Shield is 2nd (but TW and Spines can't use Shield, so we can't extrapolate where Shield/TW Tankers would land), Stone is 3rd, Invul 4th, DA 7th, SR 10th.
3) if we remove the obvious AE farm build that is FA/Spines from Spines ranking, we still see Bio/Spines as a much more popular option compared to other Spines primaries than Bio/TW is compared to other TW primaries. Bio/Spines' relative percentage ends up at 29.1% without FA/Spines, while Bio/TW is at 18.5%.

In conclusion, not only there's no evidence of a particular TW tendency to ignore most primaries in favor of a select few favoring end management; but in this comparison, the data suggests the opposite. TW enjoys a greater diversity of Tanker primaries than Spines and Elec.

 

The #7 Tanker secondary is Dark Melee, with 461 characters. If you take out ALL the 116 Bio/TW Tankers AND still keep Bio for all other Tanker secondaries, you're left with 511 TW Tankers, meaning TW loses only... one spot, to Elec Melee.

TW without Bio is still more popular than Dark Melee, Staff Fighting, Street Justice, Stone Melee, Energy Melee, Ice Melee, War Mace, Savage Melee, Psionic Melee, Broad Sword, Battle Axe, Martial Arts, Dual Blades, Kinetic Attack, Katana and Claws, and all of these WITH bio.

That is to say, TW without Bio still ranks #6 out of 22 in popularity.

 

Yeah you are still missing the point.

 

Its not proving the opposite because each pairing is its own synergy.

 

Past Bio, TW drops off drastically to the next pairing.

 

That should give you insight to what people are picking and why.

 

Just lumping all of TW together doesnt tell you much, kinda like lumping radiation melee and fiery aura together on brutes.

[Galaxy Brain]

So, one thing I want to touch on is the Damage per Endurance spent, which should be the real metric we look at. Alongside End use per Second, we can get an idea of what we are looking at:

 

 

Comparing the two again, if we were to just go through each of their powers one by one in a row, we would see the above totals. TW uses about 10% more endurance total than WM did, and dealt 43% more total damage. This results in a DPE of 14.7 vs 11.35, which is 30% higher for TW. A big difference here tho, is time:

 

 

Assuming you could use Follow Through and Whirling Smash outside momentum, the top time stats show all powers activated one after the other for both sets, which is shockingly close. Below is the time if you were able to swing all of your powers during momentum, which is technically possible during TW's Build Momentum power. Without momentum, and magically able to use FT and WS outside it, TW burns 5% more End/Sec than WM going through all it's powers. However with momentum, it burns end 78% faster! 

 

So, TW has 30% more Damage per End spent, but spend End 78% faster. To push the point further, with no slotting a character with Stamina (everyone has it) recovers 2.08 end/sec. In the Momentum Time, the TW character would recoup 16.64 endurance, while the WM character recovers 26.81, which is 61% more recovered! Actually, an easier way to show it would be to just subtract 2.08 from the end/sec values:

 

 

With Momentum and recovery factored in, TW is actually burning end 121% faster. while only attacking 61% faster, for 30% more damage per endurance spent. 

 

So yes, TW hits way harder than any other set, but it appears to actually be over-paying for that luxury....

 

Thanks to @Hopeling, we have the values of how much more damage each TW attack deals:

 

On 9/11/2019 at 2:49 PM, Hopeling said:

One thing that nobody seems to have brought up yet is that TW outright does not follow the design formulas, and instead all the attacks deal more damage than they're "supposed to". For a Brute, here is how much damage the attacks "should" do for their recharge and area, versus what they actually do:

• Defensive Sweep: 25.7 formula, 30.4 actual (18% extra)
• Crushing Blow: 68.4 formula, 75.2 actual (10% extra)
• Titan Sweep: 50.5 formula, 59.6 actual (18% extra)
• Follow Through: 81.7 formula, 89.9 actual (10% extra)
• Rend Armor: 121.8 formula, 134 actual (10% extra)
• Whirling Smash: 33.4 formula, 48 actual (44% extra)
• Arc of Destruction: 91.6 formula, 108.3 actual (18% extra)

With that in mind, lets re-run everything else I've done with these new values:

 

 

Lets look at the DPA:

 

The old values were 19%, 105%, and 42% in TW's favor, which dropped down to 5%, 79%, and 24%. Still in TW's favor but by nowhere near as much going by the Avg.

 

 

43% -> 25% more total damage, and only 13% more Damage per End down from 30%. Still better, but again not by a huge margin!

 

So, what is left here is the issue with the insane 121% faster endurance consumption while in Momentum. You know... lifting a swinging the weapon the first time should cost more endurance than when it's got momentum thematically. What if when you are already swinging you get an endurance discount?

 

Just spitballing a number here, but lets say that we buff Momentum to include a 30% endurance discount while active. That drops the 121% rate down to a much more reasonable 55% rate. This could be much, much more manageable with simple slotting / the plethora of secondaries that offer endurance tools on top of TW still hitting harder per swing.