Focused Feedback: Electrical Affinity - Powers (Build 6)

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, Knottewe said:

I haven't tried it myself but I assume the Sentinel could have slotted the non ato pet auras, which would have been pretty handy the sets that don't have a 4th summon power.

Im pretty sure all mastermind pets can slot Recharge Intensive Pet Sets even though they don't benefit from the recharge.

[oedipus_tex]

So, the endurance drain on Defibrellate.

 

I think we may need to talk about a recalibration. Endurance drain at top efficiency should probably come in at, or close to, Power Sink, a very good power for draining enemies. Power Sink starts at -35% Endurance, which with two IOs brings it to -58%. I could see Defibrillate topping out at about-50% endurance before IOs but not much more than that. 

 

It's hard for me to tell how much Defib is currently draining, but based on the screenshot below, it looks like a lot, lot more than Power Sink. The amount drained versus a same-level Possessed scientist was 87.99 points of endurance. This was unslotted with end mod IOs. So I'm taking that to mean slotted with 2 level 50 IOs would have drained 87.99 x1.66=145 endurance. Controllers, Defenders and Corruptors can take Power Boost to make this obscene. I imagine it would instantly floor even +4 elite bosses. Against an Elite Boss, Shock (-recovery for 30 seconds) would then virtually guarantee a fight against a mostly helpless enemy.

 

 

It's hard for me to offer an exact perfect number here because of the somewhat binary nature of endurance drain. 

 

You may want to implement a rule that the power does different endurance drain to different tiers of enemies. Maybe this full strength drain is ok for minions and Lts but not bosses or EBs. That would make the power useful enough to completely take out the riff raff without worries about how it deals with big targets.

 

 

Note that flooring EBs isn't necessarily a problem--Electric Controllers can do it with some work. But it's difficult to floor an enemy instantly without assistance from additional powers, mainly Power Sink. There aren't a lot of big, instant duration Endurance drains out there, other than the nuke and PBAoE in Electric Blast, and Power Sink/Power Drain.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Knottewe]

8 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Im pretty sure all mastermind pets can slot Recharge Intensive Pet Sets even though they don't benefit from the recharge.

They can, but if the Sentinel took pet ios then it would free up 4 slots from your Henchmen in the sets that don't have Gang War or the equivalent.

 

A bit of a moot point now though, as he couldn't take them and hes gone.

[oedipus_tex]

Sorry, I underestimated in my last reply. I was able to slot Defib and test against same level enemies:

 

 

 

That's with this slotting:

 

 

 

So, with max Static I'm achieving close to a 200% endurance drain. +4 enemies resist end drain by 48%, so even against them I'm within a few points of instantly draining them dry. 

[oedipus_tex]

Sorry to keep replying with new data. I'm still working out how to properly account for Static stacks.

 

Turned out I was underestimating the max number of stacks I could get from Static. Here's what I was able to work myself up to with medium effort:

 

 

 

So, that's a 263% endurance drain. Against +4s, that would be 263 x0.48 = 126.24, which would instantly floor them. 

 

 

By the way I am curious why the power listed each enemy hit 4 times. I'm not certain but it seems like the Sleep Magnitude might be applying to every enemy for every enemy. In other words, it might be applying the Sleep 4 times to each enemy instead of once to each of the 4. This might explain why I felt like the power sometimes slept bosses. It's also possible I'm wrong. I need to look into it more.

Edited March 19, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Wavicle]

Just now, oedipus_tex said:

Sorry to keep replying with new data. I'm still working out how to properly account for Static stacks.

 

Turned out I was underestimating the max number of stacks I could get from Static. Here's what I was able to work myself up to with medium effort:

 

 

 

So, that's a 263% endurance drain. Against +4s, that would be 263 x0.48 = 126.24, which would instantly floor them. 

The question for me is, is it not intended that an Electric buff/debuff set be able to fully drain a whole group with this power that's on a long timer? Compare to Howling Twilight...

[Bopper]

8 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

So, that's a 263% endurance drain. Against +4s, that would be 263 x0.48 = 126.24, which would instantly floor them. 

To be sure of this, you need to look at the Max Endurance of the enemy. When I was monitoring a Behemoth Overlord yesterday, I saw hit Max Endurance was 139.85 (level 50 lieutenant). I don't know how much endurance an EB would have, but it certainly does not have to be 100.

 

Aside, would you mind if I quote your results in the DTTTF thread for consolidated test results on Defibrillator? 

[oedipus_tex]

3 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

The question for me is, is it not intended that an Electric buff/debuff set be able to fully drain a whole group with this power that's on a long timer? Compare to Howling Twilight...

 

I think that's a bit of a philosophical question.

 

I don't personally consider 2 minutes a long timer. That's around 1 min on an IO build and 35 seconds on a top build.

 

The answer in a nutshell is that I can only compare it to other endurance drain sets. Electric Control, Blast, and Armor cannot drain an enemy dry instantly on their own. They can, with some effort, do it with some support from APPs, but they have to build for it and they are hedged in by power radius. Power Sink and Power Drain have a radius of 10 feet. So instant endurance floors are not really a thing for the whole mob even at top performance. 

 

For Electric Affinity right now I could charge up a bunch of charges of Static, run at an enemy group invisibly, and instantly floor their endurance with just Defibrellate. This is a new set,a buff/debuff set that specializes in electricity, so its hard to say whether that's in the zone that's allowable. But it does leave me asking if other sets need Power Sink to complete the puzzle and then can't get the whole mob at once, does this apply to Electric Affinity as well?

 

This is always going to be a bit of a balancing act because endurance drain is so binary. 

 

Right now my distinct temptation is to roll a Gravity/Electric Affinity Controller. Wormhole the enemies to you, Defib. They're not fighting back in this century. I've got mezz protection, a self heal, an absorb shield, endless endurance. An amazing single target buff for Singularity. Only my damage is likely to lack (admittedly that's a big thing to lack). Too much? Depends I think on whether total control over enemies is still a thing of value any more. If it's not, the Dominator and Controller archetypes could use a revisit.

[Galaxy Brain]

@oedipus_tex, does defibrillate do % drain or raw drain? That is very important as enemies go as such:

 

Minions 100 end

Lts 140 end

Bosses 200 end

EBs 800 end

[Jimmy]

FYI Defibrillate is currently broken and the AoE is firing off multiple times if you have more than one enemy near you. Should be fixed in the next build.

 

For now, only use it against lone enemies if you want accurate numbers.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

@oedipus_tex, does defibrillate do % drain or raw drain? That is very important as enemies go as such:

 

Minions 100 end

Lts 140 end

Bosses 200 end

EBs 800 end

I presume End Drain is subject to the Purple Patch?

[oedipus_tex]

3 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I presume End Drain is subject to the Purple Patch?

 

Yes it is subject to the purple patch.

 

 

Most endurance drain is a percentage, so the number of endurance points an enemy has is irrelevant from the perspective of draining. I mean, not totally irrelevant, it affects other things, but you know what I mean.

 

An enemy with 100 endurance, drained by 50% = 50/100 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar.

 

An enemy with 200 endurance, drained by 50% = 100/200 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar.

 

An enemy with 800 endurance, drained by 50% = 400/800 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar.

 

 

I think part of the issue we've always had with endurance drain is it tends to be applied in ways that are very binary. Electric Melee is a great example. Each power has a 100% chance to drain a little endurance. What would be far more useful, especially in AoEs or possibly small radial effects caused by single target powers would be a 10-20% chance to drain a huge amount of endurance. That's the issue we've always had with endurance drain. Splitting up endurance drain evenly among 16 mobs does nothing. But totally draining 5 of the 16 has a very noticeable effect.

 

If they changed it so Ball Lightning, in addition to its current effect, had a 15% chance to drain 100% endurance (as the base, enhanceable) the whole Electric Blast set would be far more attractive because you'd be very likely to drain at least one or two of the mobs completely.

 

 I have a lot more to say about this and how this should scale between archetypes but I'll save it for another discussion. Basically tho my feeling on fixing endurance drain runs similar to my opinion on knockback. For Defenders, there should be a higher chance not necessarily just a higher drain (and right now even the drain doesn't scale).

[Galaxy Brain]

33 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

I think part of the issue we've always had with endurance drain is it tends to be applied in ways that are very binary. Electric Melee is a great example. Each power has a 100% chance to drain a little endurance. What would be far more useful, especially in AoEs or possibly small radial effects caused by single target powers would be a 10-20% chance to drain a huge amount of endurance. That's the issue we've always had with endurance drain. Splitting up endurance drain evenly among 16 mobs does nothing. But totally draining 5 of the 16 has a very noticeable effect.

 

If they changed it so Ball Lightning, in addition to its current effect, had a 15% chance to drain 100% endurance (as the base, enhanceable) the whole Electric Blast set would be far more attractive because you'd be very likely to drain at least one or two of the mobs completely.

This is a great idea as long as it's player only. 🙂 

[oedipus_tex]

Just now, Galaxy Brain said:

This is a great idea as long as it's player only. 🙂 

 

Yes it would have to be player only. This is fair, because unlike enemies, players have to manage toggles.

 

Also, getting instantly endurance floored in PVP because of a bad die roll would completely suck.

 

But what I particularly like about this philosophy is how it would fix the biggest issue with Electric sets right now: the way you need to pair primary and secondary up to make endurance drain work. 

 

I call this design philosophy "A lot of drain, but in a small area." How you control the "area" is up to the power designer:

• Power  Sink and Power Drain already do this by being limited to a small radius (10ft). I see no change needed to these powers.
• You could limit area with a pure die roll (10-20% chance).
• You could limit area by only allowing the effect to apply a particular mob type (minions, lieuts, bosses, etc)
• You could combine these things. 

 

One thing I do kind of want to avoid is defining area using "combo mechanics" like Impact in the Gravity set or Energy Overload in Energy Assault. I feel like these combo systems do not combine well between primary/secondary and have led to a lot of issues.

 

 

To stay on topic with Defibrellate: although we are still working out numbers, I'd like to see one of the following happen to keep with the "A lot of drain, small area" philosophy:

• Make the endurance drain huge and guaranteed to floor at least some enemies, but keep radius very small
• Make the endurance drain modest but have a chance to totally floor a percentage of enemies (for a power like this a 35% chance might be appropriate since drain is the main function of the power)
• Make the endurance drain huge but limit it by enemy type (minions and lieuts for example)

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Maybe this full strength drain is ok for minions and Lts but not bosses or EBs.

I'm of two minds on this.  On the one hand, if you're going to do Sapping as Support, shouldn't it be allowed to be great at it? 

 

On the other hand, if it's too effective at Sapping, what's even the point of building other Sapping characters?  There are tons of builds that can do sapping while still being OK at their primary roles, but they will feel comparatively silly once people start building Electric Affinity toons specifically for sapping.

 

I guess the best thing to do is going to be to nerf the benefit of additional stacks (unless it's due to the multi-aoe issue) and buff it down the road (like sentinels - we need to make sure our unique community darlings aren't also OP as hell).

[oedipus_tex]

Sorry, I forgot to include something critical to build on what I was just saying about the "Lot of drain, small area" philosophy.

 

Part of the reason this approach would fix cross-set issue is that when you move to a chance system, stacking endurance drain becomes less all or nothing. 

 

Let's look at the Dominator set Electric Assault. It has one cone power and a lot of single target attacks. Each single target attack drains 7-10% endurance.

 

Pardon my French here. This is f#*&* worthless. The effect might as well not even be there. I'm not ripping the power designers. I know how hard it is to balance sets. But Paragon missed the ball here.

 

Each power having endurance drain is fine--good actually, It means you can keep an enemy floored by continuining to punch. What's missing is any chance to put an enemy in that vulnerable position in the first place.

 

Say that each attack in Electric Assault had a 10% chance to do 100% endurance drain per enemy within 10ft (maybe not literally all the powers, but some of them at least--lets say the heavy hitters). This could be either emanate from the caster or the target--doesn't matter really, just needs to be there. Now the whole game has changed. I can remove a couple of targets from play. Once I've got one, I can switch to punching it to keep its bar drained, and with each punch guess what, I have a chance to drain other enemies.

 

The reason this fixes combinations so well is that let's say I roll and drain an enemy completely. Well, that enemy is drained for a while. If I roll again and happen to do another drain, I may just end up draining the same enemy. So I'm not pulling light years ahead. He was drained anyway. It would be very difficult or impossible to drain the whole mob this way, due to the way math works. But I could control a decent number.

 

Mostly though endurance drain wouldn't just be worthless. Right now, on sets like Electric Assault it's just that. Completely irrelevant.


The tie in with Defibrillate is, to keep it relevant for all combinations of sets it does indeed need to do a huge drain. Just to a more select area.

Edited March 19, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Vanden]

So, totally subjective feedback, but I think it would be really cool if Shock was changed from a "shoot lightning at the enemy to weaken them" to a "drain electricity from the enemy to weaken them" theme. A lot of electric-based characters in fiction will "charge up" by sucking electricity out of power lines, car batteries, generators, etc., and while that's not something CoH is set up to do, draining enemies is pretty close. I was thinking it would use the Dehydrate animation, the projectile FX would originate at the target and connect to the user's hands, and the FX from toggling on Static Shield in Electric Armor could be repurposed, playing on just the arms. The name would probably have to change to something like Power Leech or Sap Strength.

 

This would've been even better if Shock was still a Static Builder, but maybe some kind of token +Regen or something could be added on a hit?

[Sir Myshkin]

50 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

To stay on topic with Defibrellate: although we are still working out numbers

To highlight again what Jimmy pointed out, it has been determined that Defibrillate is not applying correctly, and is actually executing an AoE effect as a ST trigger on each mob in a spawn (as in activating the Defib effect as an AoE, on each target, instead of just one execution as an AoE on the primary target), which is returning ridiculous values and also potentially the reason we're seeing mobs got sent to sleep for seven minutes at a time. Once the next patch fixes these multiplicative issues I'd revisit what it's doing then to get a better idea.

 

I will mention, for what it's worth, that I did take a build out to Monster Island and tested Defib stacked to 20 (18 by the time the animation kicked and consumed), with Power Boost active on one of the DE Lattices. It hits for an absurd amount on a single target, but against a Monster class enemy it only budged its bar by 6-8%, despite being a nearly 1,000 point hit. I couldn't find any active Heavy Assault Units in the RWZ last night to try against an EB class, and didn't bother trying to find an actual AV in a mission, so I can't confirm quite how it'd scale for them.

 

In general I agree with what you're saying Tex, but wait until the current bug(s) get patched out and re-evaluate your feelings on it, it might be dramatically different as a result.

 

Edit: For what it's worth to post it here in this thread as well, Bopper started a self-contained thread for jsut Defibrillate testing, this is what I had posted over there from testing yesterday (technically 1-3am this morning):

Spoiler

• Component Targeting: Did not appear to have an issue with targeting, was able to get it to fire off under multiple circumstances with live bodies, no dead partners to test off of (leave that up to someone else who can schedule a time for that purpose).
• Component Movement: This seemed off to me, when is the power truly activating? I have to break this down into sub-bullets...
  • If I queued up Defibrillate out of range and ran into an enemy and jumped past them, the entirety of the spawn I lanced through would not have any impact from the ability by the time I landed. It was activating, and I was doing through the animation, but no event triggered on any enemies as would usually occur in a lancing scenario.
  • If I stood within a spawn and activated Defibrillate, and any mob in the spawn started to run away from me, there was a chance they would not get impacted by the effect. This typically seemed to be around the point where if they got outside of the 20' radius before the animation showed me coming back down from the jump, they wouldn't get impacted.
  • In both cases I'd considered this failing to work correctly, but also... at the same time does make it feel more realistic that I couldn't abuse a lancing tactic to rez/sleep a mob to avoid melee/getting trapped.
• Mixed Components:
  • Draining: At a certain extent it was strange to be hitting for 300-400 point endurance reductions at just a few stacks, but it worked consistently, and ramping up to 12-16 stacks is so easy that getting a high number was pretty much a guarantee. I did try this against a range of enemy levels from 40 to 50, and then also against a Monster class Devouring Earth up in Peregrine Island. The Monster DE massively resisted it, but with 16 stacks, Power Boost, and then hitting Defib, I was able to notch out maaaaaaybe 6-8%.
  • Static Consumption: Whether 2 or 20, never had an issue consuming the entire stack.
  • Radius: Where is the radius for the ability triggering from? I was using Faraday Cage as a guide since it's 25' (which, btw, feels a bit small for a team, especially on a MM). I want to assume the ability is striking its effect based on player position, but without seeing lines of impact more closely, I couldn't say for sure that I was getting 20' or not, just a rough idea of it. Essentially if something didn't get impacted in Faraday, I was trying to adjust accordingly, but there were several cases that something would be just inside the edge, and not get hit (which would make sense), so I tried rotating around enemies and wasn't necessarily sure it was me, because using the same base target, got the same result despite trying to inch close to the missed target physically. I didn't spent an enormous amount of time on this aspect as it was a bit of "splitting hairs."
  • VFX: Shouldn't we be getting a sleep animation, not a stunned? With the electric effects "chaining" the target to the ground, the positioning and lul-stance sort of work, but it doesn't thematically mix with the fact they're supposed to be sleeping. Also, isn't sleep the one thing AV's have the least resistance to? If I can super-stack Static, are we opening up a window against AV's that probably shouldn't exist?
    • Sub notes on the VFX aspect of things, but also a question of the duration, mag, and overall effect of the abilities in question... Noticed repeatedly that if I go in, Defib with the Sentinel out and it keeps discharging, but I don't do anything else, the mob will just sit there in that stun-chain position indefinitely. Attempted to Defib with minimal stacks to keep the shortened duration, and they'd still stick like this for an extended period of time. If I go in with no Sentinel, and no stacks, I get a 15-20/s ish duration sleep, and then they move like normal. Hit a Fake Nem and a Warhulk in PI and just sat there for a good two minutes with not an inch of movement. Without being able to really see the duration of the sleep effect remaining, or knowing what that duration even is, hard to determine where the breaking point on this issue is. All I know is that I shouldn't be able to sit there for the entire duration of Faraday cage waiting for them to "wake up" and run away. Whether that's a bug in the effect, or revolving around the duration of the sleep and its magnitude, whatever, it's too long.
      • Also, Gewehr Jaegers are immune to sleep?
      • 
      • That Cuirasseur sat for seven minutes in the "effected" state, and now is just sitting there with the electric VFX, still hasn't run or attempted to attack me since impacted, and lost aggro long before it mattered.
• Component Autohit: In-game combat log files Defibrillate as auto-hit, but then rolls an accuracy check, and I've now seen it MISS and still impact a mob, and also HIT and not impact a mob. What component actually uses the Accuracy calculation for this ability, or is it all auto-hit and the accuracy check a null thing that shouldn't be checking? Also wanted to bring up Procs in this power, what formula is Defibrillate using for its effect? I've had pretty fairly consistent luck getting one, if not both Perf.Shifter +End and Sandman +Heal to trigger in the power when only one mob is in the effected radius, which doesn't line up with most AoE/Cone trigger consistency. Typically I'd need at least four mobs together in the area of effect to see even just one proc trigger, let alone two. I've also slotted the thing up to the gills with recharge reduction for faster testing.

 

Apologies in advance if some of my questions have been answered elsewhere up to this point, but they're a bit nitty-gritty so I was guessing that to probably be a no. I haven't been as ingrained in this Beta patch as the last one due to time and other things going on.

 

Small Edit: I did Record the majority of my time on Brainstorm testing stuff, maybe another 30-40 minutes I didn't cause I knew the file was going to get too long to sort through. Since we're on upload restriction, I'm not putting it anywhere, but if it were wanted/needed, I have it.

 

tl;dr Bugs.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Sir Myshkin
Added note.

[oedipus_tex]

37 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

To highlight again what Jimmy pointed out, it has been determined that Defibrillate is not applying correctly, and is actually executing an AoE effect as a ST trigger on each mob in a spawn (as in activating the Defib effect as an AoE, on each target, instead of just one execution as an AoE on the primary target), which is returning ridiculous values and also potentially the reason we're seeing mobs got sent to sleep for seven minutes at a time. Once the next patch fixes these multiplicative issues I'd revisit what it's doing then to get a better idea.

 

I will mention, for what it's worth, that I did take a build out to Monster Island and tested Defib stacked to 20 (18 by the time the animation kicked and consumed), with Power Boost active on one of the DE Lattices. It hits for an absurd amount on a single target, but against a Monster class enemy it only budged its bar by 6-8%, despite being a nearly 1,000 point hit. I couldn't find any active Heavy Assault Units in the RWZ last night to try against an EB class, and didn't bother trying to find an actual AV in a mission, so I can't confirm quite how it'd scale for them.

 

In general I agree with what you're saying Tex, but wait until the current bug(s) get patched out and re-evaluate your feelings on it, it might be dramatically different as a result.

 

Edit: For what it's worth to post it here in this thread as well, Bopper started a self-contained thread for jsut Defibrillate testing, this is what I had posted over there from testing yesterday (technically 1-3am this morning):

  Reveal hidden contents

• Component Targeting: Did not appear to have an issue with targeting, was able to get it to fire off under multiple circumstances with live bodies, no dead partners to test off of (leave that up to someone else who can schedule a time for that purpose).
• Component Movement: This seemed off to me, when is the power truly activating? I have to break this down into sub-bullets...
  • If I queued up Defibrillate out of range and ran into an enemy and jumped past them, the entirety of the spawn I lanced through would not have any impact from the ability by the time I landed. It was activating, and I was doing through the animation, but no event triggered on any enemies as would usually occur in a lancing scenario.
  • If I stood within a spawn and activated Defibrillate, and any mob in the spawn started to run away from me, there was a chance they would not get impacted by the effect. This typically seemed to be around the point where if they got outside of the 20' radius before the animation showed me coming back down from the jump, they wouldn't get impacted.
  • In both cases I'd considered this failing to work correctly, but also... at the same time does make it feel more realistic that I couldn't abuse a lancing tactic to rez/sleep a mob to avoid melee/getting trapped.
• Mixed Components:
  • Draining: At a certain extent it was strange to be hitting for 300-400 point endurance reductions at just a few stacks, but it worked consistently, and ramping up to 12-16 stacks is so easy that getting a high number was pretty much a guarantee. I did try this against a range of enemy levels from 40 to 50, and then also against a Monster class Devouring Earth up in Peregrine Island. The Monster DE massively resisted it, but with 16 stacks, Power Boost, and then hitting Defib, I was able to notch out maaaaaaybe 6-8%.
  • Static Consumption: Whether 2 or 20, never had an issue consuming the entire stack.
  • Radius: Where is the radius for the ability triggering from? I was using Faraday Cage as a guide since it's 25' (which, btw, feels a bit small for a team, especially on a MM). I want to assume the ability is striking its effect based on player position, but without seeing lines of impact more closely, I couldn't say for sure that I was getting 20' or not, just a rough idea of it. Essentially if something didn't get impacted in Faraday, I was trying to adjust accordingly, but there were several cases that something would be just inside the edge, and not get hit (which would make sense), so I tried rotating around enemies and wasn't necessarily sure it was me, because using the same base target, got the same result despite trying to inch close to the missed target physically. I didn't spent an enormous amount of time on this aspect as it was a bit of "splitting hairs."
  • VFX: Shouldn't we be getting a sleep animation, not a stunned? With the electric effects "chaining" the target to the ground, the positioning and lul-stance sort of work, but it doesn't thematically mix with the fact they're supposed to be sleeping. Also, isn't sleep the one thing AV's have the least resistance to? If I can super-stack Static, are we opening up a window against AV's that probably shouldn't exist?
    • Sub notes on the VFX aspect of things, but also a question of the duration, mag, and overall effect of the abilities in question... Noticed repeatedly that if I go in, Defib with the Sentinel out and it keeps discharging, but I don't do anything else, the mob will just sit there in that stun-chain position indefinitely. Attempted to Defib with minimal stacks to keep the shortened duration, and they'd still stick like this for an extended period of time. If I go in with no Sentinel, and no stacks, I get a 15-20/s ish duration sleep, and then they move like normal. Hit a Fake Nem and a Warhulk in PI and just sat there for a good two minutes with not an inch of movement. Without being able to really see the duration of the sleep effect remaining, or knowing what that duration even is, hard to determine where the breaking point on this issue is. All I know is that I shouldn't be able to sit there for the entire duration of Faraday cage waiting for them to "wake up" and run away. Whether that's a bug in the effect, or revolving around the duration of the sleep and its magnitude, whatever, it's too long.
      • Also, Gewehr Jaegers are immune to sleep?
      • 
      • That Cuirasseur sat for seven minutes in the "effected" state, and now is just sitting there with the electric VFX, still hasn't run or attempted to attack me since impacted, and lost aggro long before it mattered.
• Component Autohit: In-game combat log files Defibrillate as auto-hit, but then rolls an accuracy check, and I've now seen it MISS and still impact a mob, and also HIT and not impact a mob. What component actually uses the Accuracy calculation for this ability, or is it all auto-hit and the accuracy check a null thing that shouldn't be checking? Also wanted to bring up Procs in this power, what formula is Defibrillate using for its effect? I've had pretty fairly consistent luck getting one, if not both Perf.Shifter +End and Sandman +Heal to trigger in the power when only one mob is in the effected radius, which doesn't line up with most AoE/Cone trigger consistency. Typically I'd need at least four mobs together in the area of effect to see even just one proc trigger, let alone two. I've also slotted the thing up to the gills with recharge reduction for faster testing.

 

Apologies in advance if some of my questions have been answered elsewhere up to this point, but they're a bit nitty-gritty so I was guessing that to probably be a no. I haven't been as ingrained in this Beta patch as the last one due to time and other things going on.

 

Small Edit: I did Record the majority of my time on Brainstorm testing stuff, maybe another 30-40 minutes I didn't cause I knew the file was going to get too long to sort through. Since we're on upload restriction, I'm not putting it anywhere, but if it were wanted/needed, I have it.

 

tl;dr Bugs.

 

 

Yes I know that Defib is stacking too high per the developer post earlier. My posts are more about what numbers "should" be targetted and how to make the power meaningful without being overwhelming. Right now the power is following a "huge area" philosophy as opposed to the one I was suggesting as an improvement, big drains but to fewer targets.

 

GMs and AVs are highly resistant to -Endurance and should not be used as benchmarks. Elite Bosses are a mixed bag depending on whether they are true EBs or de-promoted AVs. Standard Elite Bosses like the ones in the ITF and the Lady Gray Task Force are extremely vulnerable to endurance drain, as are the ones in the Summer Blockbuster missions. 

Edited March 19, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Sir Myshkin]

Just looking at the intention of things currently, its ridiculously broken, all in agreeance there, but personally I think we should wait and see what the "true vision" behind the design was once a fix to how Defibrillator The Jericho is implemented plays out. We might very well be concerned over a number that's only at the extremes it is because of the multiplicative factor of the bug. Given a decent amount of play time with both Kinetics and Electrical Blast (and some with Electric Control), each has different ways of impacting the enemy blue bar, but in many cases they all find a way out of that blue-bar struggle. I'm all for finally having a set that truly says "No" to a mob's stamina.

 

3 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

The tie in with Defibrillate is, to keep it relevant for all combinations of sets it does indeed need to do a huge drain. Just to a more select area.

As such, I did give this some more mulling around thought, tried skimming around to see if anyone else had suggested something like it (I may have missed if they did, doing a lot of catch-up here). There's a little thinking out loud here:

• I don't think we should be able to nuke the blue bar of an entire mob in a 20' radius.
• A multiplicative duration/magnitude Sleep attached to a spawn-drain is overpowered, irregardless of the fact that Sleep is easily interruptible.
• As-is, pre incoming fix, it is possible for any of us to stack up 16+ Static and walk into any mob of our choosing and knock the entire spawn out and take a coffee break.

Taking into account your thoughts on the topic, Tex, had me thinking both on how we can diminish the return and add balance into the power, but I'm not sure how technically complicated it would be (if even possible without disrupting Sleep). Have Defibrillate hit the main target as it stands, and then for the follow up do a combination of a flat AoE for the Sleep effect, and add a chain effect off the initial target that delivers a shock around the group with diminishing effect each time it jumps. So if the main target gets hit for a huge amount (200%), each follow up is reduced as the chain spreads out from the epicenter. Ideally it would just show the energy/impact diminishing as it spreads around. The amount of times it chains would be based off the amount of stacks consumed (seven stacks, seven chains, etc). Not only does that control the amount that can be impacted, but it also controls the volume of end reduction as it reduces down each jump. No tampering with the chance of the effect, just reduce the amount of it each step.

 

From a coding stand point I'm not sure how much of a nightmare that'd actually be, but has this idea come up at any interval along the line?

[oedipus_tex]

22 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Just looking at the intention of things currently, its ridiculously broken, all in agreeance there, but personally I think we should wait and see what the "true vision" behind the design was once a fix to how Defibrillator The Jericho is implemented plays out. We might very well be concerned over a number that's only at the extremes it is because of the multiplicative factor of the bug. Given a decent amount of play time with both Kinetics and Electrical Blast (and some with Electric Control), each has different ways of impacting the enemy blue bar, but in many cases they all find a way out of that blue-bar struggle. I'm all for finally having a set that truly says "No" to a mob's stamina.

 

As such, I did give this some more mulling around thought, tried skimming around to see if anyone else had suggested something like it (I may have missed if they did, doing a lot of catch-up here). There's a little thinking out loud here:

• I don't think we should be able to nuke the blue bar of an entire mob in a 20' radius.
• A multiplicative duration/magnitude Sleep attached to a spawn-drain is overpowered, irregardless of the fact that Sleep is easily interruptible.
• As-is, pre incoming fix, it is possible for any of us to stack up 16+ Static and walk into any mob of our choosing and knock the entire spawn out and take a coffee break.

Taking into account your thoughts on the topic, Tex, had me thinking both on how we can diminish the return and add balance into the power, but I'm not sure how technically complicated it would be (if even possible without disrupting Sleep). Have Defibrillate hit the main target as it stands, and then for the follow up do a combination of a flat AoE for the Sleep effect, and add a chain effect off the initial target that delivers a shock around the group with diminishing effect each time it jumps. So if the main target gets hit for a huge amount (200%), each follow up is reduced as the chain spreads out from the epicenter. Ideally it would just show the energy/impact diminishing as it spreads around. The amount of times it chains would be based off the amount of stacks consumed (seven stacks, seven chains, etc). Not only does that control the amount that can be impacted, but it also controls the volume of end reduction as it reduces down each jump. No tampering with the chance of the effect, just reduce the amount of it each step.

 

From a coding stand point I'm not sure how much of a nightmare that'd actually be, but has this idea come up at any interval along the line?

 

 

For Defib, I'd have the power do a very strong endurance drain but only to a certain percentage of mobs. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Keep the hit sphere big but roll a percent chance. For this power, I'd use 40% chance or so for a very large drain.
• Keep the hit box very large but give it a small target cap (e.g. 5 enemies).
• Keep the hit box very large but limit the effects to minions only, or to minions and lieutenants.
• Make the hit box for the endurance drain much smaller. 10 feet or so (matches Power Sink). 

 

I'm personally mostly fine if the power does severely drain Elite Bosses--this powerset, with the Shock power, is highly geared toward that. But I do think the philosophy for this set, and the philosophy for endurance drain sets in general going forward, should be "lots of drain to a small number of targets" as oppposed to the historical "guaranteed drain to a large number of targets." 

 

The second consideration in all this is how this set combines with other powersets. You want the endurance drain to still be useful if it is combined with a set other than Electric Control or Blast. 

Edited March 20, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Hjarki]

25 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I don't think we should be able to nuke the blue bar of an entire mob in a 20' radius.

You already can with Thunderous Blast (admittedly, you may not notice because most of the mobs will be dead) or Short Circuit. This also doesn't seem all that different from Howling Twilight disorienting everything in the area. While the mechanics may be a bit funky with large numbers of mobs atm, I see no problem with a complete endurance wipe against a crowd of minions/lieutenants/bosses.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Hjarki

[Wavicle]

Maybe if Galvanic Sentinel and presumably Voltaic Sentinel are Not going to be made into perma pets at least Voltaic could have the same 2 minute duration as Galvanic?

[oedipus_tex]

2 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

You already can with Thunderous Blast (admittedly, you may not notice because most of the mobs will be dead) or Short Circuit. This also doesn't seem all that different from Howling Twilight disorienting everything in the area. While the mechanics may be a bit funky with large numbers of mobs atm, I see no problem with a complete endurance wipe against a crowd of minions/lieutenants/bosses.

 

Howling Twilight is a Mag 2 Stun that affects only minions. Medium-recharge Hard AoE control powers on buff/debuff sets are generally limited to Mag 2.

• Howling Twilight
• Repulsion Bomb
• Thunder Clap
• Dark Pit (in a blast set)

 

Mag 3 is allowed on Sleep and Terrorize. It is also allowed on nukes, a few of which have Mag 3 Holds or Stuns, and quasi nukes like EM Pulse and EMP Arrow with their million year recharges.

 

The above is why the Mag 3 AoE Holds in the newer Blaster secondaries are considered so egregious.

 

Endurance Drain is technically a debuff rather than a Control and falls into a somewhat unexplored category. Regardless tho, I don't agree instantly wiping an entire mob of endurance with a power that Recharges in about 40 seconds is a great way to go. The issue you will run into is either this will be amazing on every build, or else amazing just on builds that combine Electric Affinity with Electric Control or Blast, with little in between. If I'm going to use a power like Defib, I need to know its going to take a few enemies out of the fight, but it also shouldn't be wiping out the fight entirely. The only real way to achieve that is to have it strongly drain a portion of mobs but not all of them.

 

Interestingly, Thunderous Blast already implements a version of what I'm describing, on a different scale, with its percent chance to drain additional endurance. It's a true nuke so I think its okay if it's known to drain enemies. 

[Sir Myshkin]

26 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

You already can with Thunderous Blast (admittedly, you may not notice because most of the mobs will be dead) or Short Circuit. This also doesn't seem all that different from Howling Twilight disorienting everything in the area. While the mechanics may be a bit funky with large numbers of mobs atm, I see no problem with a complete endurance wipe against a crowd of minions/lieutenants/bosses.

Tangent on Electric Blast: I did not specifically slot for it beyond Alpha (and planned additional stacking effects with Interface selections), but Short Circuit will not effectively clear a mob's bar consistently at +4. The only scenario I had reasonable success with that idea was on a Kin/Elec Defender that barely managed to get Short Circuit to consistently lock down minions/lieuts on their endurance back on Retail so many years ago.

 

I've already talked about it a couple of times now, and the problem with wiping out the endurance of an entire spawn, on top of all of the -Recovery available to Electric Affinity, means I can walk away without any concern for my safety because they will not recover for a considerable length of time (as the power stands currently in combination with the Galvanic Sentinel). When I tested the set I made absolutely no attempts at building for anything, no global, no recharge, nothing but the core abilities with Acc, End Mod, and Rech as appropriate, and some Res in Faraday and Temp Invuln just to see what numbers I would get out of it (71% between the two on S/L for what it's worth, and 23% on everything else, and IO build will be pretty ridiculous). My point is, I could stack up a swarm of Static, jump into a spawn and fire of Defibrillate, and ... nothing, I didn't have to do anything but make sure the Sentinel was next to the spawn, and it kept them is isolation indefinitely during its duration.

 

And yes, Defib is technically broken right now and is massively over applying Sleep (and probably End Mod) mag/durations, but the point still stands that being able to 100% shut down a spawn from being able to do absolutely anything is not balanced when it is an indefinite effect. If there were no -Recovery involved it might be a different, but the combination of Defibrillate and Discharge is making it better than a perma-hold.