"Meta" Tweaks

[Galaxy Brain]

7 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

Many sets actually do have "bad" ST damage. I do not consider 200 DPS "good" at this point in time now that we have procs, incarnates, level shifts, etc. There is definitely a reason for 10 minute Apexes versus 18 minute ones, and it is due to better team party buffs and higher ST damage against War Walkers and AV's, that is one example, but there are many. 

No set has "bad" ST damage in the same realm of how say, EM has "bad" AoE. The only sets I can think of which actually "bad" ST are Spines and Robotics, and they both are "fine" with Bots having a very cheesy -1000% regen from the Assault bot to make up for their bad ST output vs hard targets. I think we are looking at this from two different directions though, as yes an Apex would favor better ST with multiple War Walkers but that is one Trial/Task Force vs the multitude of story arcs / legacy task forces / etc where you are faced with waves of enemies that favors AoE output naturally.

 

7 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

This is from the scope of someone who is probably doing PI radios on +4/x8 or ITFs at +4/x8, not from the perspective of speed runners, fast soloers, and people who enjoy speed task forces. It is not a niche specialty to down AV's much faster and shave minutes off of task force times and other tasks. Honestly for someone who wants to enjoy the game and do well in it, they may fair better running a low players setting at higher level difficulties and enjoy the game far more with the high ST DPS than AoE. Remember: the way you play is not the way that everyone plays and views it.

Not just PI Council / ITF's, just general content throughout the game follows the basic formula of tossing tons of minions and LT's your way for I'd wager 85% of content. If you're soloing or speed running specific content then of course that would carry a different "meta" than what we normally see, but IMHO this is not the norm when you look at your every day team.

 

7 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

My ideas range more on creating more "extreme" content, much nastier than Banished Pantheons. The theoretical enemy group would have high health values (much higher than the typical min/lie/bosses) and would do absurd amounts of damage that would feel stupid, and also have high mez resistances. These enemies would have to be chain stunned/held/mezzes to be able to get through it without totally incinerating the Tankers on the team. Now of course, that's something I'd love but I'm sure other people aren't as hardcore or want those things, but I recognize there is lots of content for these people who would not enjoy it, whereas I'd like to see that type of challenge for teams and myself. 

I'd love that myself! More instances where different types of powers are useful compared to "just blow them up", similar to the Xenoblade games where different status effects and enemy states can radically change combat compared to just brute force. 

 

Sure, you could just go ham and buzzsaw a tough boss down. Or, you could apply a Stun to them somehow, and then that makes them vulnerable to other mez effects which then strip all it's armor and makes it easy while you got them locked down. Etc.

 

 

 

---

 

4 hours ago, nihilii said:

Yep. IMHO, AoE has been overvalued since the beginning of Homecoming. It's partly a perception thing and partly people doing too much AE farming, and it just doesn't translate as well in the real game.

 

A character designed to deal ST damage efficiently will generally wipe out minions with what little AoEs he has in the process of killing the bosses in a group. Sometimes lieuts may even fall as well. Adding more AoEs actually hurts you as the gap between lieut health and boss+ health is too big to be patched efficiently through AoE rather than ST (unless you've got a crapton of them on a full team, with so much overkill it's a challenge to find a target... at which point you're not worried for performance anyhow).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to skip Fireball nor Inferno. But all my characters are minmaxed for ST damage, with their AoEs as a byproduct. They perform better that way. The reverse would make them abysmal. ST damage is king. ST damage is required for anything that is actually a speed bump, from high con bosses to EBs to AVs.

Its not just AE farming, as I was able to show in the OP, simply having each member of a random 8-man team throw out a typical 10+target AoE is enough to wipe all minions within range from +0 to +4 on, and should be able to wipe out all LT's within range in 2 cycles. Within 2 cycles, +0 bosses are nearly dead and +4 bosses have a solid chunk taken out of them to make ST damage much easier (at +3 it'd be even easier).

 

I'd argue that is more indicative that AoE is overtuned if ST focused characters can wipe out swathes of targets by accident anecdotally, as well as backed up by the "averages" example I came up with. What more specialized AoE characters bring to the table is the ability to clear even faster if they have multiple AoEs or stronger ones (usually both) which further eats into any ST targets within a given encounter outside of specifically hard single targets which only show up in special missions. I've rarely ever been on a PuG running task forces where we have actually struggled to beat down an AV either. It may take a bit longer depending on the group, but outside of very specific encounters we have never been stonewalled. (Ironically to the other part of the thread, a stonewall we usually face is not having enough Mez for the weakened Hami in lady grey lol)

 

 

4 hours ago, nihilii said:

Another point I strongly agree with. 200 DPS is also pushing it when we consider actual player builds ingame. Many people don't run attack chains, they click whatever. I'd estimate the average DPS of your typical spines/fire brute to be closer to 100 than 200. I've been on pickup itrials where the league literally didn't have enough DPS to take down the final AVs.

 

For that matter, I still don't have the Really Hard Way badge. Most PuG I end up with are clueless as how to do this except through exploiting Lore, Incan and team insps. Their builds simply don't have the ST focus to deliver damage without tricks.

 

The less optimized you are, the more ST DPS matters. There is a hard limit to how little damage you can deal and still outpace regen. Especially in itrials where there's timed conditions on top of it.

 

This may warrant investigation, but I'd think that 200 dps per person should be achievable in most random PuGs with the amount of buffs/debuffs either on yourself or shared with the team. 

 

 

Also, I'm at 1337 rep now yay 

 

 

 

[Zeraphia]

7 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

 

Also, I'm at 1337 rep now yay 

Though, I may disagree with these posts, as this is a milestone for you, congratz! 

 

I also think maybe you could change the topic from the "meta" to perhaps the "basic"?

Edited June 23, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Apparition]

3 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

No set has "bad" ST damage in the same realm of how say, EM has "bad" AoE. The only sets I can think of which actually "bad" ST are Spines and Robotics, and they both are "fine" with Bots having a very cheesy -1000% regen from the Assault bot to make up for their bad ST output vs hard targets.

 

 

Water Blast, meet Galaxy Brain.  Galaxy Brain, Water Blast.

[Zeraphia]

8 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Water Blast, meet Galaxy Brain.  Galaxy Brain, Water Blast.

In addition, (non-Stalker) Elec Melee, Psionic Melee (has decent burst but horrible sustain), Kinetic Melee, Staff Fighting, Energy Blast, Radiation Blast (though this one is a bit better overall than Energy), and Elec Blast isn't reliably good (relies on Sentinel which can easily get distracted if multiple enemies are present, to get it to competitive levels).

 

In addition, Energy Melee's version of Whirling hands is far inferior to Dominator's "Energy Released!" Whirling Hands that I honestly consider the best AoE Dominator set because of that.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Yomo Kimyata]

12 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Though, I may disagree with these posts, as this is a milestone for you, congratz! 

 

I also think maybe you could change the topic from the "meta" to perhaps the "basic"?

I thought the title was really apt!  The current meta for team play is Zerg at +4/x8.  Once upon a time the meta was taunt and ambush.  I’m not sure how or if the meta will change in the future.

[nihilii]

10 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Its not just AE farming, as I was able to show in the OP, simply having each member of a random 8-man team throw out a typical 10+target AoE is enough to wipe all minions within range from +0 to +4 on, and should be able to wipe out all LT's within range in 2 cycles. Within 2 cycles, +0 bosses are nearly dead and +4 bosses have a solid chunk taken out of them to make ST damage much easier (at +3 it'd be even easier).

The level of coordination required for 8 team members to throw out AoEs accurately on demand is so far above and beyond any qualification of "random" in my books. The average 8-man PuG I see has at least 1 if not 2 guys lagging behind or AFK and half if not more of the team using their powers inefficiently. Even beyond the efficiency problem, it's extremely rare for a random assortment of players to play the game at the exact same speed.

If the stars do align and you find yourself on such a team, if mobs also align so AoEs hit their target cap everytime, and if you stick to standard missions with no tough threats despite this highly skilled team, then yes you have a point. Maybe you do find yourself on such teams frequently. I'm not claiming it's impossible. But I don't think I've ever joined a pickup group that performed as that level, personally.

As for numbers, I say the same numbers can tell another story. In an ideal scenario for maximum speed, bosses should drop down at the exact moment lieutenants and minions do; failing that, the ratio should be as close as possible. That is, it would be better to kill all lieuts and minions in 12 seconds then drop the remaining bosses in 3 more seconds than to wipe out lieuts and minions in 10 seconds and take 10 more seconds to kill the bosses. There's 2 bosses in a regular x8 group, and given the disparity between boss and lieut HP, as well as the difference in DPA and recharge between AoEs and ST, spamming flurries of AoEs past the point lieuts are dead simply isn't worth it to take down those 2 bosses.

Potential counterpoint, if the team you're on is struggling with survivability it might be better to wipe out minions and lieutenants slightly faster to avoid too much incoming damage. I'm looking at this strictly from the lens of clear speed, with the assumption survivability is handled.
 

[tidge]

@Redlynne 's post on the utility of Damage enhancement over other should be required reading. I was able to appreciate it without the name-drops/appeal to authority, but whatevs.

 

While it might come as a shock to not be able to buzzsaw through content with AoE attacks, I tend to agree that lowering the 'damage schedule' of enhancing AoE attacks ought to slow the game down which ought to allow for (larger spawns of) enemies to utilize the powers they've already been given to provide a challenge to players.

 

I don't really think that just adding Health (or Defense, or Resistance) to enemies is the correct approach.

 

I'm well aware of how players react to 'nerfs', but writing only for myself it feels WEIRD that I have toons capable of soloing content that would normally take some level of teaming up.

[nihilii]

44 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

This may warrant investigation, but I'd think that 200 dps per person should be achievable in most random PuGs with the amount of buffs/debuffs either on yourself or shared with the team

I was thinking of DPS without external buffs/debuffs, but you know, that is an actually interesting question.

If we work backwards, a full team where the average effective DPS per teammate ends up at 200 would do 1600 DPS. Which should drop a level 50 AV and their 28,275 HP in 17.67 seconds.

I've been on plenty of PuGs that could take out AVs in less than 20 seconds, but I've also been on just as many PuGs who would take longer (and of course, as I tend to bring 300+ DPS characters *before* buffs/debuffs, my own contribution inflates the numbers).

 

Anecdotally, I have seen 3, 4, 5, 6 characters barely outpacing level 54 AV regen. Purple patch and all and even before level shifts, we're still only talking about something in the ~200 DPS range.

It might not be unrealistic to think many characters might run below 200 DPS even with team buffs/debuffs... putting their own natural DPS way below 100.

Edit: then making, I am making assumptions of my own on the force multipliers in effect. Do most teams run with effective boosts above x2? Between -RES, +DAM and -RECH, especially against a single target where -RES can be focused and -REGEN also counts as damage, I want to say "yes", but that's just a feeling.

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by nihilii

[Omega-202]

11 hours ago, Redlynne said:

The basic idea being that damage slotted into Single Target powers would remain on Schedule A (+33.33%) ... while damage slotted into AoE powers would shift to Schedule B (+20%).

 

What this would do is that it would "widen the gap" between Single Target and AoE damage powers in terms of their throughput efficiency and help combat that enormous power creep that combined AoE attacks were capable of due to their high (on Schedule A) enhancement values.  In practice, the difference would be between enhancing up to 2x damage (Single Target) versus 1.6x (AoE) using the same damage enhancement slotting, which while not a whole lot of reduction/nerfing would be enough to change the mental calculus among Players as to the perceived "value" of Single Target attacks relative to AoE.  Basically, it would "open a space" in which AoE damage doesn't "win by default" due to excessive value gained from damage enhancement.

On paper, this sounds fine, but it ignores the fact that we have damage buffs outside of enhancements.  500% Fireball is 500% Fireball, whether you get there starting from 156% or 195%.  

 

All this would do is annoy people for nerfing AoE damage, while shifting the meta by resurrecting Kinetics as king, making more people use Assault and Assault Hybrid and using macros to combine+use red insps. 

 

Instead of doing something so complicated as changing the enhancement schedule which can be easily circumvented, if your end goal is to nerf AoE damage, then just nerf AoE damage.  

 

To the larger topic as a whole, the game definitely has balance issues at endgame.  But the AoE vs single target disparity (to me) should be way down the priority list.  The lack of usefulness for CC and 75% of support sets is way bigger.  If a power is not doing or increasing damage, lowering resists or regen, or adding defense/resistance to both you and the team in a way that does not significantly eat into your DPS/resist debuff/regen debuff, then its generally a non optimal power.   This basically means CC, healing and long activation/high refresh survivability powers are all considered situational at best and trash at worst.  

 

EDIT: As a follow up, I also think that the general premise of your 1 Dam vs 1 Rech vs 1 End thought experiment is flawed when you consider IOs and the resources available to us.  Yes damage enhancements outclass the others.  I think that is basically a "duh" statement at this point.  Look at most IO sets and look what a full set leaves you at.  100% damage, 67% Acc and 50% end/recharge is by design.  Its obvious that damage is king in damage powers.  

 

But when you look at set bonuses, there's so much more recharge, accuracy and endurance bonuses available compared to damage, and generally in greater amounts.  The disparity between the value of these enhancements has been baked into the game at this point and other things like set bonuses exist to address the fact that rech/end/acc slotting is less optimal in the powers themselves. 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Omega-202

[Redlynne]

4 minutes ago, nihilii said:

If we work backwards, a full team where the average effective DPS per teammate ends up at 200 would do 1600 DPS. Which should drop a level 50 AV and their 28,275 HP in 17.67 seconds.

That's only true if AV Regen is near zero and Resistances are also near zero.

[nihilii]

1 minute ago, Redlynne said:

That's only true if AV Regen is near zero and Resistances are also near zero.

Point taken.

 

Although AV regen only adds up to an extra second. More napkin math:

- round up ~93hp/s to 100

- lower 1600 DPS to 1500 DPS

- 28,275 / 1500 = 18.85 seconds

So it doesn't really change the overall point on that one.

 

Resistance is muddier, in that on a team with 8 different teammates it's likely at least one person will have their damage resisted to an extent. But on the other hand many AVs have no resistance, and I've definitely been on teams where level 50 AVs with 0% resistance to everything took longer than 20 seconds to defeat.

[Leo_G]

44 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

In addition, (non-Stalker) Elec Melee, Psionic Melee (has decent burst but horrible sustain), Kinetic Melee, Staff Fighting, Energy Blast, Radiation Blast (though this one is a bit better overall than Energy), and Elec Blast isn't reliably good (relies on Sentinel which can easily get distracted if multiple enemies are present, to get it to competitive levels).

Stating my opinion on that: I just think your standards have changed and shifted too far toward the meta. There is nothing wrong with any of those sets. 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Leo_G

[Zeraphia]

4 minutes ago, Leo_G said:

Staying my opinion on that: I just think your standards have changed and shifted too far toward the meta. There odds nothing wrong with any of those sets. 

Oh no, it's not that the sets themselves as wholes are flawed, I'm pointing out sets that are weak in ST damage, does not mean they're bad sets.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Zeraphia

[Parabola]

5 minutes ago, tidge said:

I'm well aware of how players react to 'nerfs', but writing only for myself it feels WEIRD that I have toons capable of soloing content that would normally take some level of teaming up.

I've long been of the opinion that the fact that any character can solo any content at 4/8, no matter how overtuned the powersets, expensive the build or easy the content, is a failure in the game design. This is a team game; soloing should certainly be possible and fun, but just not at the maximum difficulty. If the absolute bleeding edge of uber builds could just about survive a 1/8 council radio mission solo then in my opinion (and I'm well aware it's not an overly popular one!) the game would be much better balanced.

[Omega-202]

5 minutes ago, Leo_G said:

Staying my opinion on that: I just think your standards have changed and shifted too far toward the meta. There odds nothing wrong with any of those sets. 

They are objectively undertuned sets.  They're not unplayable by any stretch, but they're not wrong in stating that those sets are not "good" in the endgame meta in comparison to others.

[Leo_G]

3 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Oh no, it's not that the sets themselves as wholes are flawed, I'm pointing out sets that are weak in ST damage, does not mean they're bad sets.

Like I said, your standards might have shifted. I don't feel any of those sets are weak in ST. They may not excel in ST sustained DPS, but I feel a distinction should be made between weak and generalized/unspecialized.

[Leo_G]

3 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

They are objectively undertuned sets.  They're not unplayable by any stretch, but they're not wrong in stating that those sets are not "good" in the endgame meta in comparison to others.

And you've further hyperbolized his intent since I feel this might be more of a semantics argument. Now you're bringing in "good" likely in context of comparing them to meta builds which is exactly what I'm pointing out. 

[Omega-202]

5 minutes ago, Leo_G said:

And you've further hyperbolized his intent since I feel this might be more of a semantics argument. Now you're bringing in "good" likely in context of comparing them to meta builds which is exactly what I'm pointing out. 

What are we discussing here if not "meta builds" in a thread titled "meta tweaks"?  

 

You're either arguing that those sets are good and part of the discussion on the meta and are objectively wrong, or you are off topic to the thread.  

 

Edit: although I will say that non-Stalker Elec has a place in the meta, but you need to address the single target hole in the build to make it competitive.  

Edited June 23, 2020 by Omega-202

[xl8]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Months ago I was on a Posi 1 with my rad/bio stalker and when we got to the doppelgängers, I suggested, “We should probably take out my clone first.  He’ll one shot all of us.”  Instead we charged and I got my clone down to about half health before he killed me and then killed four others.  Good times!

I was on this team and laughed when you said this. But yes, I was one of the only ones left standing (lv50 exemped). Good times indeed.

[xl8]

16 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I would like to see if we can actually measure why this appears to be the case, as well as offer suggestions on what could be done to existing encounters to allow for "non meta" builds to shine and actually be "meta" in their own ways.

I'm sure this has been said before, but I'll throw it in here to get a response... What's wrong with introducing +5, +6, +7.... content?

[Leogunner]

4 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

What are we discussing here if not "meta builds" in a thread titled "meta tweaks"?  

 

You're either arguing that those sets are good and part of the discussion on the meta and are objectively wrong, or you are off topic to the thread.  

 

Edit: although I will say that non-Stalker Elec has a place in the meta, but you need to address the single target hole in the build to make it competitive.  

If you're following the line of discussion rather than cherry pick rebuttals (and I'm annoyed that I have to outline it for you), it started with a reply saying "No set has "bad" ST damage in the same realm of how say, EM has "bad" AoE. " by the OP, mind you, that was then replied by a more joking response (but still had an important point to make) about Water Blast followed up by another more serious reply about other sets that are supposedly "bad" at ST.

 

So the line of discussion is more a measurement of what is and isn't considered bad which would be more the opposite of meta (anti-meta perhaps).  The thing is, I'm arguing those sets are not anti-meta, merely not-meta which is a very important distinction since we don't need things shifted so a meta set now performs "bad" or a not-meta set to become meta.  

[Zeraphia]

8 minutes ago, Leo_G said:

Like I said, your standards might have shifted. I don't feel any of those sets are weak in ST. They may not excel in ST sustained DPS, but I feel a distinction should be made between weak and generalized/unspecialized.

All due respect, not all of the sets are as bad as the others on the list. For example, Electrical Melee is saliently weak in ST. It has been found in numerous metrics that it not only has bad base ST damage, but it does not have access to consistent -res procs (technically Jacob's Ladder could technically take FotG, but it would not proc consistently given its 8 second recharge). This in turn lands this set in a weak position for ST DPS, when people put this set in the bottom of the bottom for ST, it is not an exaggeration, on average it will only do 50-60% of the damage of A-tier ST sets (not S-tier TW) not factoring even what they can run with consistent -res procs. 

 

Psionic Melee is deceptive. You think it's a top-tier ST set, unfortunately due to its cast rate of GPB + Insight's wonky mechanic structure + no -res procs to be ran, and it is not great for ST damage, though not as bad as Elec. PvP with this set is wildly different. 

 

Kinetic Melee is another deceptive one. It does have high bursts of damage, but it is still a slow set, and the lack of -res procs it can run consistently in conjunction with this fact, hinder the set substantially for non-Stalkers.

 

Staff Fighting is the case of "not a bad set" but a poor performer overall for ST damage. It is slower in terms of animations, relatively weaker in damage, and cnanot run -res procs consistently. You can run Achilles' in Mercurial Blow, but it is doomed by its extremely short cooldown, also not even chosen in higher-end rotations just due to its base DPS being too low. However this set is endurance light and gives defenses, and gives knockdowns, therefore is actually an example of something with still great utilities that can offset the weaker ST damage.

 

Energy Blast I've found to be less damaging than even Water by itself. Water can run -res procs, even without a sniper, its proc damage seems to actually carry it in a way that makes it slightly better than I've found with Energy Blast. Energy Blast cannot run -res procs in its optimal chains, is often going to "give up" slotting or melee DPS due to the fact that if you choose to "mix" it with melee hits to make it do higher DPS, you're going to have to "weaken" the blast attacks by slotting lots of kb->kd OR you lose out heavily on DPS by not mixing in melee hits, either way, it's a loss.

 

Radiation Blast isn't too bad, and is in a considerably better spot overall compared to Energy Blast, I'm not going to say this one is bad, it's just that it isn't the highest ST DPS set.

 

Elec Blast is hindered by not having a follow-up hit like Blaze, Will Dom, etc. for its sniper. Not in nearly as bad of a camp as Energy Blast for ST, but not great either. To get it to competitive levels as I said before, you rely a bit on Voltaic Sentinel to get it there.

 

The former statements are reflective of the sustained hard DPS to down an AV/GM.

[Omega-202]

11 minutes ago, xl8 said:

I'm sure this has been said before, but I'll throw it in here to get a response... What's wrong with introducing +5, +6, +7.... content?

Purple patch would start causing issues beyond +5.  The debuffs start ramping up and at +7, things would just break down to the point of uselessness. 

 https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

[xl8]

8 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Kinetic Melee is another deceptive one. It does have high bursts of damage, but it is still a slow set, and the lack of -res procs it can run consistently in conjunction with this fact, hinder the set substantially for non-Stalkers.

As a set I would agree, but as @Sir Myshkin has pointed out, your first three powers in Kin Melee are the AC to use and are very strong.

[xl8]

2 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Purple patch would start causing issues beyond +5.  The debuffs start ramping up and at +7, things would just break down to the point of uselessness. 

 https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

Sure, but would that issue be... you have to play together as a solid team?