What if we add DPA to the damage formula?

[aethereal]

The dirty secret of CoH balance is that damage of powers is based on their recharge time, but the controlling factor for the DPS of characters is heavily controlled by the cast time of powers (especially in a high-global-recharge world).  Because of this, the DPS of saturated attack chains of various different comparable sets may vary by 2x or more.

 

Everyone knows that DPA is at least as important as recharge time, arguably much more important, but we still use a damage formula that totally ignores cast time of a power and then we kind of try to mix in DPA in the non-quantitative eyeball-it stage of balance.  This is nuts.

 

Why don't we just come up with a new damage formula that weights cast time some amount?  There even is one in the game, the PvP damage formula!  If we established a new damage formula, either one that uses the same ratios of cast time vs recharge time as the PvP formula (but uses area factors like the current PvE formula), or one that weights them a little differently, we could have a target to shoot for in terms of all these sets that overperform or underperform on DPA.

 

I'm not crazy enough to suggest that then we change the damage values of all damage-causing powers, that would obviously be a cluster.  But just having a normalized value to compare with would let us make more sensible decisions when we did have balance passes at individual sets, and we could incrementally move towards a more sane world.  The target would be a guideline, not a hard rule, just like the current damage formula, but it would be something we could have sensible discussions around, rather than, "Well...  the damage formula is 'right' for this set but we all know that the result is absolutely godawful so let's 'nerf' the recharge times of all the powers so the set will be better."

[Rathulfr]

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for?  The powers info already includes both Damage Per Second (DPS) and Damage Per Activation (DPA) values.  What specific changes to the game are you suggesting?  How would that look/work differently than what we have now?

 

Related link about "ArcanaTime" for reference, in case it comes up: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/ArcanaTime

 

[aethereal]

It's not about what the game shows, it's about how powers are balanced.  Right now, most powers in the game follow a formula that bases their damage on their recharge time (and the size of the area that they affect if they are not single-target).  Longer recharge = higher damage.  Cast time is not taken into account.  A power with a 12s recharge time and a 3s cast time gets the same damage as a power with a 12s recharge time and a 1s cast time.

 

It's a guideline, not a rule, and there are intangible factors that affect damage beyond recharge, but it's a guideline that leads to a bad result.  We should start from a basis that makes some amount of sense, and then pile unquantified factors on top of that, instead of starting with a nonsensical rule and then trying to balance on top of it.

[Bossk_Hogg]

Agreed. That the OG devs didnt even factor in cast time shows how bad they were at some basic design.

 

I would do with a scaling bonus to damage based on any cast time over 1.5 second. Currently the trend has been to just shorten all animations, but it would be nice to have a variety of quick hits and big whammies. If Thunderstrike actually hit hard enough to justify its glacial animation I could deal with the inevitable corpse blasting.

[Haijinx]

Seems like a big change to make at this stage

Edited May 7, 2020 by Haijinx

[Bopper]

I think you mean to incorporate cast time into the damage formula, not DPA. There would be no direct way to incorporate Damage per Animation Time into a formula that would produce that Damage. That would introduce a feedback loop, that just gets messy.

[Replacement]

It seems like the first step would be finding the average activation time of all attack actions.  I would probably exclude blast nukes and controls (since they tend to have damage more as a rider effect than as their selling point) from that initial search for a benchmark.

 

Even if HC doesn't really agree, I think there could be value in doing this as a community... sort of finding that mean activation time, and showing which powers radically vary from that time without noticeable compensation.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Replacement

[Galaxy Brain]

51 minutes ago, Replacement said:

It seems like the first step would be finding the average activation time of all attack actions.  I would probably exclude blast nukes and controls (since they tend to have damage more as a rider effect than as their selling point) from that initial search for a benchmark.

 

Even if HC doesn't really agree, I think there could be value in doing this as a community... sort of finding that mean activation time, and showing which powers radically vary from that time without noticeable compensation.

You rang?

 

(Jots down next project)

[SurfD]

14 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for?  The powers info already includes both Damage Per Second (DPS) and Damage Per Activation (DPA) values.  What specific changes to the game are you suggesting?  How would that look/work differently than what we have now?

I believe the issue he is attempting to address is something like the following:

- Ability damage (generally speaking) uses Recharge Rate as it's baseline for determining a power's damage and ignores the "animation" part of the cast time as a factor (not the "arcanatime" as you mentioned, which is basically the "global cooldown" on abilities that prevents you from just activating all your abilities at once).

- This means that a power with 12 seconds recharge and a 3 second attack animation has the same damage coefficient as a power with a 12 second recharge and a 6 second animation.                 

- In the above example, both powers will have the same DPA and the same DPS until you reach enough global haste to halve your cast times.

- once you hit enough global haste, the power with the 6 second animation is HARD CAPPED in a rotation, as you can not use it more often than it's animation.  Meanwhile, the power with the 3 second animation continues to increase in effective DPS/DPA as you continue to increase global haste.

- in effect, the 12secRech/3secAnim power has the potential to be significantly more DPS/DPA than the 6secAnim power if you can push global recharge high enough, even though on paper both are "equal" because they are baselined on only their recharge rate.

[Zepp]

Just to clarify, cooldowns start after the animation concludes. So you can never spam a single attack uninterrupted. Also, this means that a 3s attack with 3s recharge is up every 6s, while a 1s attack with a 3s recharge is up every 4s, so the actual time between uses is also significantly different for long-animation abilities.

The standard damage formula is:
0.2*(0.8*Recharge+1.8)

While recharge should be taken into consideration, DPA is a much more important balance factor for most attacks.

As such, animation time ought to be considered when calculating damage. In addition, damage type (possibility of resistance) might also need better weighting. This is complicated, but the damage of S/L may need a slight reduction in PvE and a significant increase in PvP. On the other hand, Psi damage could use a significant increase in PvE and a slight reduction in PvP.

The goal is balance, and the recharge-focused formula sounds good before the explosion of global recharge in IOs (that was necessary because control and support powers still have excessively long cooldowns). Unfortunately, that would mean an overall shift in all damaging abilities which would mean a major overhaul of the game.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Zepp

[Saiyajinzoningen]

ok just to make sure we are all on the same page here. the op wants cast times calculated into damage so powers with longer cast times do more damage than shorter ones, in addition to the normal formula?

 

I might be an outlier here but that kinda makes sense.

[aethereal]

Yes, longer cast times would raise the damage of powers.

[Coyote]

4 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

ok just to make sure we are all on the same page here. the op wants cast times calculated into damage so powers with longer cast times do more damage than shorter ones, in addition to the normal formula?

 

I might be an outlier here but that kinda makes sense.

 

That's right, and you're not an outlier. Almost everyone agrees that it makes sense, it's just a question of whether the team is willing to take the lots of time to go through it.

 

[tidge]

My Bane Spider has queued up his mace to post something in this thread, but you will have to wait for the animation to finish to read it...

[Darkneblade]

So technically what does can it do to control powers? (no damage)

And stalker's assassin's strike?

With hidden, cast time is long so you deal more damage but for fast assassin strike (not hidden) you deal less damage in theory. (or normal damage?)

Make sense I suppose but control powers with no damage should also their duration increased if cast time is long (most control powers has more than 2s cast time anyway)

[Coyote]

I would think that for Control powers you would only look at the cycle time, not the animation time. So a power with 8 recharge and 1 activation has a 9 cycle time, while one with a 2 activation has a 10 cycle time. So the one that has a 10 cycle time maybe could get a 11% increase to its duration, but not more.

 

The reason is that for damage powers, you can easily get into a situation where you always have a relevant damaging attack to use, so animation time is really the DPS limiter.

However, for control powers, you're not chaining mezzing power back to back without a break, so the Control/Second limiter is the cycle time, not the animation time.

[drbuzzard]

The value of fast animating attacks is actually independent of global recharge. It's always been a factor in why some sets have been better than others. Energy Melee was single target king back when energy transfer had its 1 second animation. Now its DPAS (damage per activation second) is nowhere near as good, and it dropped the whole set out of contention. Any attack chain is going to have DPS determined by the average of the individual DPAS .  For example fire blasters are clear and away the damage champions, and a lot of that has to do with blaze. It animates fast and hits like a truck.  Of course global recharge does exacerbate this by allowing chains to focus on the high DPAS attacks. 

 

Considering that sustained DPS is actually the most relevant stat when comparing sets (though figuring that for AOE will be quite the can of worms), the OPs suggestion is how things should have been done from the start. Whether or not it will be fixed that way is a different matter, but if you want sets to have a semblance of balance, this is how it has to be done (at least in part). 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Isn't this exactly what Castle and BAB did with claws? The whole set was rebalanced around the cast times and it led to some interesting problems. Namely, me on beta tearing through a pylon in what would even be considered today a horrifically broken time. Yea, it was fixed, but it can be argued that claws/spin continues to be considerably overpowered for its cost.

[drbuzzard]

Well claws has follow through (iirc) which acts as a perma build up of sorts, and they was likely not considered if you melted a pylon. 

[tidge]

On 5/7/2020 at 11:32 AM, tidge said:

My Bane Spider has queued up his mace to post something in this thread, but you will have to wait for the animation to finish to read it...

... and someone else made the exact point he was going to make. Oh well, maybe next thread.

[Caulderone]

On 5/8/2020 at 8:53 AM, Bill Z Bubba said:

it can be argued that claws/spin continues to be considerably overpowered for its cost.

Spin (tank) does more AoE dps than FSC+Comb over time.  It's pretty insane damage.

It does cost more End per second doing it, though.

Edited May 10, 2020 by Caulderone

[Herotu]

On 5/6/2020 at 10:40 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

You rang?

 

(Jots down next project)

\o/ You're the real hero here, Brian!

Edited May 10, 2020 by Herotu
Edited to spell Brain incorrectly on purpose.

[macskull]

The PvP damage formula takes activation time into account and honestly from a balance standpoint it makes sense for PvE as well since the idea of recharge being the driving factor while completely ignoring activation time is bonkers. The issue is that it would completely change the game and a change that has such a huge impact on literally every character is probably something that would be better saved for a hypothetical CoH 2.

[aethereal]

As I said in the first post, I'm not advocating wholesale changing every damage power.  I'm saying let's know what the "right" damage is so that when we do revisit a set, we can just say things like, "okay, for this power, I'm just normalizing the damage."

 

The thing I object to, I guess, is when we end up saying, "to fix battle axe, let's lengthen recharge times of a bunch of powers until they eyeball right." That's just so hacky. 

[...]

Yes. The current design formula is sorely lacking. 

 

A good reference point is highly desirable. If only to give the current developers a benchmark when planning future changes.

 

Rebalancing each powerset one by one around said formula would be a tedious and long process... but was overdue long before sunset. I don't expect the current developers to do it though. Too much to ask from volunteers. 

 

That said, a formula should probably get done before any changes to titan weapons... TW is good specifically because it manipulates DPA mechanics, and without a good reference point, you're just fiddling/eyeballing. 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Vooded
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