Understanding 'Energy Focus' A Little Better

[Toxis]

BETA EDIT - This has been fixed/changed in beta, we may see some variation of that fix when it goes live.

 

 

Hey all, I have been having an absolute blast rolling around with a Gravity/Energy Dom for the last couple months. I thought I would share what I have found out about how the mechanic works and a few of its quirks. Even with the issues it currently has, I would still recommend this set for anyone wanting to give it a try but be warned you may want to build a melee capable Dominator :) 

 

This post is mostly to address the issue of entering Energy Focus mode and having it disappear on before you can activate an Energy Release powers. If you understand the mechanic already just skip down to the Janky Bit.

 

How Energy Focus works:

1. Enter Energy Focus

    - Hit an enemy with Total Focus (100%)

    - Hit a stunned enemy with an Energy power except Power Burst or Whirling Hands (20%)

 

2. Energy Release

   - Hit Enemy with a Power Release power for bonus damage or debuff (Bone Smasher, Power Burst, Whirling Hands)

 

Orange Rings around your Energy Release powers show you are in Energy Focus mode

 

 

Energy Focus Cooldown:

*I refer to cooldown as how long a power is locked out of activating Energy Focus, nothing to do with a powers recharge rate*

 

Whenever you use a power to enter into Energy Focus you immediately get an icon of the power in your buff/debuff display area. This icon will represent that power cannot activate Energy Focus again for a short time (Roughly 15 seconds). This means you can use a different attack to achieve Energy Focus. I have been able to activate it 3 times within 15 seconds as you can see in the screenshot below I have Total Focus, Sniper and Bone Smasher all on cooldown represented by their icons.

 

 

The Janky Bit

I believe that the duration of your Energy Focus mode is tied to the duration of your power's icon/cooldown duration. Makes sense right? Activate Energy Focus with a power and 15ish seconds later you lose the orange rings but that power can enter Enter Focus again.

 

The first issue is that whenever one of the cooldowns runs out it will remove any Energy Focus you currently have regardless of which power activated it. This makes it a bit harder to use Energy Release powers within 15 seconds of each other. You have to make your decisions quick enough, luckily these powers don't take too long to recharge.

 

The second issue solely lies with our favourite activating power, Total Focus. When the cooldown for Total Focus runs out, it removes Energy Focus from your character shortly after the icon disappears. This means that there is about a 1 second gap where you can activate Total Focus again, achieving Energy Focus, and then lose it before you can activate another power. In addition to that, Total Focus is on cooldown again.

 

My theory for the second issue is that the dev was nice enough to give us some extra time to play around with Energy Focus because of the long casting time compared to the other powers. This lead to a second or so gap between the cooldown and the removal of Energy Focus. 

 

Conclusion

Honestly this doesn't happen super frequently, though it does suck when I expect a mini nuke of Whirling Hands only to lose it right before it activates. I have posted about it in the Bugs section of the forum so if it hasn't been brought up yet I hope they see it. I'd like to say it shouldn't take much to fix it but I also don't think it should be that high on the priority list either as I am still capable of having a ton of fun as is.

 

If anyone has trouble understanding this or thinks I did not do a good enough job making it clear let me know with questions and I'll do my best to fix it up.  

Edited October 25, 2020 by Toxis

[Mezmera]

First I'll say again the enemy doesn't need to be stunned to activate the mechanic, it seems far too complex of coding for a power to read what status an enemy is in than just giving a percent chance upon activating each internal power.  I know this as my Mind dom has no stuns and before I had Total Focus my blasts would eventually trigger the effect.  Not many controls have a stun in them so I don't think the dev team would want to lock people out from consistently making the most out of this mechanic over something so arbitrary as the target needs to be stunned in order to activate, why not held or slept or feared then?

 

However you activate the mechanic the icon for that power does show up on your status bar for exactly 10 seconds indicating that you are locked out from activating the mechanic again until that power icon disappears from your bar.  Sometimes I do have my Energy Release effect still active after that icon may have disappeared from my bar so the effect likely does last for 15 seconds before it goes away.  

 

The janky bit hasn't anything to do with recharging of your powers.  My TF recharges quite nice and yet that's not what seems to lose its hold on the Energy Release.  I've lost the mechanic on times by just getting it with TF then moving and all of a sudden it disappears even before my TF recharged again.  There's no rhyme or reason why you lose this mechanic out of the blue sometimes things just suck.  

 

Yeah like you said it is an annoyance to just lose the mechanic for no reason at times but mostly you're having too much fun with it to let the negativity bother you when playing this.  

[Toxis]

25 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

First I'll say again the enemy doesn't need to be stunned to activate the mechanic, it seems far too complex of coding for a power to read what status an enemy is in than just giving a percent chance upon activating each internal power.  I know this as my Mind dom has no stuns and before I had Total Focus my blasts would eventually trigger the effect.  Not many controls have a stun in them so I don't think the dev team would want to lock people out from consistently making the most out of this mechanic over something so arbitrary as the target needs to be stunned in order to activate, why not held or slept or feared then?

 

Is it possible you were hitting enemies you stunned with Bone Smasher or Whirling Hands or be on a team with someone else who has a stun? I have tried to activate Energy Focus on an enemy that is not stunned but have had no luck. 

 

27 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

However you activate the mechanic the icon for that power does show up on your status bar for exactly 10 seconds indicating that you are locked out from activating the mechanic again until that power icon disappears from your bar.  Sometimes I do have my Energy Release effect still active after that icon may have disappeared from my bar so the effect likely does last for 15 seconds before it goes away.  

 

I have only checked the icons for Total Focus, Snipe and Bone Smasher so I cannot verify for the other blasts. They last 15-16 seconds according to my stop watch app which I have now verified it's accuracy with another on my PC. The delay you are seeing is probably just Total Focus' which has it's icon disappear before it removes Energy Focus, this is causing us to lose it before we can Release again.

 

30 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

The janky bit hasn't anything to do with recharging of your powers.  My TF recharges quite nice and yet that's not what seems to lose its hold on the Energy Release.  I've lost the mechanic on times by just getting it with TF then moving and all of a sudden it disappears even before my TF recharged again.  There's no rhyme or reason why you lose this mechanic out of the blue sometimes things just suck.  

 

I have a note under Energy Focus Cooldown stating that I refer to Cooldown as the Icon, not the recharge time of the power. I explained to you why you lose the Energy Focus in the above paragraph.

 

32 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

Yeah like you said it is an annoyance to just lose the mechanic for no reason at times but mostly you're having too much fun with it to let the negativity bother you when playing this.  

I agree with this statement but now we know why we lose it. My goal here was to help people understand it a little better.

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, Mezmera said:

First I'll say again the enemy doesn't need to be stunned to activate the mechanic, it seems far too complex of coding for a power to read what status an enemy is in than just giving a percent chance upon activating each internal power.  I know this as my Mind dom has no stuns and before I had Total Focus my blasts would eventually trigger the effect.  Not many controls have a stun in them so I don't think the dev team would want to lock people out from consistently making the most out of this mechanic over something so arbitrary as the target needs to be stunned in order to activate, why not held or slept or feared then?

 

 

I can't say for sure whether Energy Focus can trigger on an un-Stunned mob, though I've personally only seen it happen on Stunned mobs. However a power attribute that flags an aspect of a power to trigger only when a certain flag is true does exist. The extra damage from Controller Containment is built on that. So are powers that Dominate (they read the flag on the caster rather than the target, but same idea).

[oedipus_tex]

6 hours ago, Toxis said:

 

Whenever you use a power to enter into Energy Focus you immediately get an icon of the power in your buff/debuff display area. This icon will represent that power cannot activate Energy Focus again for a short time (Roughly 15 seconds). This means you can use a different attack to achieve Energy Focus. I have been able to activate it 3 times within 15 seconds as you can see in the screenshot below I have Total Focus, Sniper and Bone Smasher all on cooldown represented by their icons.

 

 

This is interesting. So each power has its own independent timer? I never really watched the specifics of how the power worked, and rely mainly on Total Focus for entering energy mode. Enter EF mode with other powers is a bit of a gamble.

 

Thanks for the detailed post, I have played this set and didn't put together the logic. 

[Toxis]

4 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

This is interesting. So each power has its own independent timer? I never really watched the specifics of how the power worked, and rely mainly on Total Focus for entering energy mode. Enter EF mode with other powers is a bit of a gamble.

 

Thanks for the detailed post, I have played this set and didn't put together the logic. 

Correct! And every time a lock out finishes, you will lose Focus if you have it. I mostly rely on TF as well which is why I hadn't noticed. The main reason for this research is to figure out why we keep losing Energy Focus mode on occasion.

[Toxis]

Below I have created a rough timeline of what I am trying to explain. I know that the the timing is not exact but what I want most people to focus on is seconds 16, 17, and 18. The lockout finishes on the 16th second but we lose any Focus we have on the 18th. So anytime we activate Total focus on second 17, we will not have enough time to activate a release power. Since most of us rely on Total Focus to give us access to Energy Focus, this is our main occurrence of losing it early. Sniper Blast and Bone Smasher have their lockout end & have any Energy Focus removed at the same time, allowing them to have no issue being used right away to enter Energy Focus again.

 

1s  1st Total Focus - Energy Focus - Focus Lockout Begins (15s)

2s

3s Power Burst - Energy Release

4s

5s 1st Bone Smasher - Energy Focus - Focus Lockout Begins (15s)

6s

7s Power Burst - Energy Release

8s

9s 1st Sniper Blast - Energy Focus - Focus Lockout Begins (15s)

10s

11s Power Burst - Energy Release

12s

13s

14s

15s

16s Total Focus Lockout Ends - Energy Focus not yet removed

17s 2nd Total Focus - Energy Focus - Focus Lockout Begins 15s) <-----

18s 1st Total Focus Lockout - Removes Energy Focus of 2nd Total Focus early<----- Not Same Time as Lockout Ending/Out of Sync

19s

20s 1st Bone Smasher - Focus Lockout Ends & Removal of Energy Focus <-- Same Time/In Sync

21s

22s

23s

24s 1st Sniper Blast - Focus Lockout Ends & Removal of Energy Focus <-- Same Time/In Sync

....

32s 2nd Total Focus - Focus Lockout Ends

33s 

34s 2nd Total Focus Lockout Removes Energy Focus

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Toxis

[Mezmera]

23 hours ago, Toxis said:

I agree with this statement but now we know why we lose it. My goal here was to help people understand it a little better.

I'm saying there's no rhyme or reason why all of a sudden you might lose that Energy Mechanic.  I've loaded up an Energy Release by using a TF and watching my tray with the powers and their orange rings I'll move slightly and for no reason at all those rings disappear.  I haven't fired any of the release powers nor has anything else had the chance to even recharge yet because I've only used TF (which hadn't recharged again) and lose it almost instantly after building it that way.  

 

There seems to be some leakage in the Energy Release mechanic.

 

The mechanic when it does last it lasts past the time that those icons disappear from your status bar.  I know this because I'm chasing to use the mode some times and keep track that I can build another with a TF right after releasing the one I've currently built.  

[Toxis]

53 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

I'm saying there's no rhyme or reason why all of a sudden you might lose that Energy Mechanic.  I've loaded up an Energy Release by using a TF and watching my tray with the powers and their orange rings I'll move slightly and for no reason at all those rings disappear.  I haven't fired any of the release powers nor has anything else had the chance to even recharge yet because I've only used TF (which hadn't recharged again) and lose it almost instantly after building it that way.  

 

There seems to be some leakage in the Energy Release mechanic.

 

The mechanic when it does last it lasts past the time that those icons disappear from your status bar.  I know this because I'm chasing to use the mode some times and keep track that I can build another with a TF right after releasing the one I've currently built.  

 

When you activate Total Focus and enter Energy Focus mode. Time two different things. Time how long it takes for the Icon to disappear (Event A) . Time how long it takes for the orange rings to disappear (Event B).

 

You will notice that there is a gap between these two events as the icon disappears before the orange rings. Regardless of Release and a gaining a new Energy Focus, Event B will STILL trigger after that set time and remove any Energy Focus gained.

 

Activating Total Focus between Event A and Event B will get you Energy Focus, but when the time for Event B hits, you lose it. Unfortunately it is such a small amount of time there usually isn't a way to Release.

 

If you have other experiences than this that is all well and good, but don't say there is no rhyme or reason when this experiment is easily repeatable. 

 

TL;DR Any time you activate Total Focus right after it's Icon disappears from the buff/debuff area, you will lose Energy Focus shortly after.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Toxis

[Mezmera]

I'm saying that I load up a TF to get my Energy Release activated.  Then the very next thing I go to do is to position myself better for the Whirling Hands by moving ever so slightly.  Before I have the chance to do anything other than take a few steps and before TF has even begun to recharge I will lose the orange rings.  It's a bug that does happen ever so often.  

[Toxis]

3 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I'm saying that I load up a TF to get my Energy Release activated.  Then the very next thing I go to do is to position myself better for the Whirling Hands by moving ever so slightly.  Before I have the chance to do anything other than take a few steps and before TF has even begun to recharge I will lose the orange rings.  It's a bug that does happen ever so often.  

 

Yup! This is what the whole post is about. At least one of the reasons that this happens to you is because you activated Total Focus right after its icon disappeared. There are other ways for it to happen if you enter Energy Focus with a different power, but you mentioned you mostly get it with Total Focus. This points towards you activating Total Focus in that small gap between the lockout ending and the removal of Energy Focus tied to the power. 

[Mezmera]

7 minutes ago, Toxis said:

 

Yup! This is what the whole post is about. At least one of the reasons that this happens to you is because you activated Total Focus right after its icon disappeared. There are other ways for it to happen if you enter Energy Focus with a different power, but you mentioned you mostly get it with Total Focus. This points towards you activating Total Focus in that small gap between the lockout ending and the removal of Energy Focus tied to the power. 

There's a misunderstanding here.  It happens at times when I've just started fighting on a new mission.  Sometimes it happens this way as well but it hardly does this when that icon goes away, I'm watching that status like a hawk so I can get another juicy Whirling Hands out there.  All in all it's still a rare occurrence however it happens to get in a tizzy about. 

[Toxis]

8 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

There's a misunderstanding here.  It happens at times when I've just started fighting on a new mission.  Sometimes it happens this way as well but it hardly does this when that icon goes away, I'm watching that status like a hawk so I can get another juicy Whirling Hands out there.  All in all it's still a rare occurrence however it happens to get in a tizzy about. 

 

All good man, I can't prove that I have found every issue with the mechanic. I am simply trying to point you towards an issue with the mechanic that I have been able to recreate 100% of the time throughout my testing.

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, Toxis said:

 

All good man, I can't prove that I have found every issue with the mechanic. I am simply trying to point you towards an issue with the mechanic that I have been able to recreate 100% of the time throughout my testing.

Like I said I'm watching my status bar like a hawk for that icon to go away so that I can build the mechanic again.  I'd notice something was amiss specifically with losing the mechanic from building it with TF again just after the one prior disappeared from my status bar.  It doesn't happen to me even 10% of the time playing this way or I'd have noticed it was this specific.  

[Toxis]

Just now, Mezmera said:

Like I said I'm watching my status bar like a hawk for that icon to go away so that I can build the mechanic again.  I'd notice something was amiss specifically with losing the mechanic from building it with TF again just after the one prior disappeared from my status bar.  It doesn't happen to me even 10% of the time playing this way or I'd have noticed it was this specific.  

 

Just for clarity's sake here, you've already released your Energy Focus before the icon disappears?

[Mezmera]

On 9/15/2020 at 4:53 PM, Toxis said:

 

Just for clarity's sake here, you've already released your Energy Focus before the icon disappears?

Okay sorry for the radio silence on this I just wanted to give it a proper play and monitor what's all happening.  I play this one so much I got a few patterns down and take some things for granted so I had to purposely do things out of the ordinary.  And get a stopwatch ready.

 

First yes it's a 15 second lockout with the icon on your status bar.  If my TF hits I get locked out of being able to get it again for 15 seconds.  The Energy Release mechanic seems to last for 15 seconds + the animation time of the TF.  I let the Release stay built past when the icon disappears and then the mechanic goes away a few seconds after that.  

 

I had to adjust my play style a bit back because after you first experience the leakage on Energy Release you don't forget it so when I get it built I release it as soon as I see an orange ring.  Hardly ever did I lose the ring jumping into a fresh fight but when I built it with TF again just after it came off of my status bar it seemed to be where it'd get lost.  Early trial and error led me to know about the icon on the status bar lockout and the leakage and like I said I overcompensated by using those release powers furiously.  I also have a zerging play style so I'm seeing more releases when I might not playing a different way if I paused a second after the 2nd TF icon to show up.  

 

As for the blasts building the mechanic I pulled Bolt into my chain and there's no way it built it at even close to 20% of the time.  I don't know if having another alternating non-release blast would help the chances but I'm not about to respec.  I also was testing it only on some gray enemies if that matters.  I only like the absolute of TF and my chain is Soul Drain to TF into WH followed up with Burst and Snipe.  

 

It's been a long time since I've played a sub 25 energy dom so it was a good refresher.  Power descriptions definitely could use more clarification and that leakage always needed to be fixed but there's the root cause of it. 

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Mezmera

[Toxis]

14 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Okay sorry for the radio silence on this I just wanted to give it a proper play and monitor what's all happening.  I play this one so much I got a few patterns down and take some things for granted so I had to purposely do things out of the ordinary.  And get a stopwatch ready.

 

First yes it's a 15 second lockout with the icon on your status bar.  If my TF hits I get locked out of being able to get it again for 15 seconds.  The Energy Release mechanic seems to last for 15 seconds + the animation time of the TF.  I let the Release stay built past when the icon disappears and then the mechanic goes away a few seconds after that.  

 

I had to adjust my play style a bit back because after you first experience the leakage on Energy Release you don't forget it so when I get it built I release it as soon as I see an orange ring.  Hardly ever did I lose the ring jumping into a fresh fight but when I built it with TF again just after it came off of my status bar it seemed to be where it'd get lost.  Early trial and error led me to know about the icon on the status bar lockout and the leakage and like I said I overcompensated by using those release powers furiously.  I also have a zerging play style so I'm seeing more releases when I might not playing a different way if I paused a second after the 2nd TF icon to show up.  

 

As for the blasts building the mechanic I pulled Bolt into my chain and there's no way it built it at even close to 20% of the time.  I don't know if having another alternating non-release blast would help the chances but I'm not about to respec.  I also was testing it only on some gray enemies if that matters.  I only like the absolute of TF and my chain is Soul Drain to TF into WH followed up with Burst and Snipe.  

 

It's been a long time since I've played a sub 25 energy dom so it was a good refresher.  Power descriptions definitely could use more clarification and that leakage always needed to be fixed but there's the root cause of it. 

 

 

Aha, finally! Thank you for taking the time to confirm most of what I have been trying to explain.

 

Again I think you'll find that your non-release blasts will build up the mechanic on stunned enemies around 20% of the time. I have been able to get these results easily with Wormhole.

 

I have already posted about this leakage in the bug reports section but was hoping we could get some more traction for it here, though not sure how many people are playing /energy Doms.

[carroto]

Thanks for this post.  It helps explain some of the strangeness I've seen with my Fire/Energy Dom.  I'm not sure that there's a lot I can do to work around it, but at least it's good to know that if I get into EF mode from one of my regular blasts, I likely don't have much time to use it since TF will probably reset it soon.

[Toxis]

Time to test the changes. Will post what I find out later when I get the chance.

[nihilii]

Only tested on an EM scrapper so far, it seems they don't get the lockout portion of Energy Focus. Crossing my fingers that lockout was a bug all along, and Doms won't get lockouts anymore. If not, we need to raise hell until we get the same buff. 🙂

[Toxis]

No lockout would be awesome :D

 

can't wait to try this out later!

[Toxis]

6 hours ago, nihilii said:

Only tested on an EM scrapper so far, it seems they don't get the lockout portion of Energy Focus. Crossing my fingers that lockout was a bug all along, and Doms won't get lockouts anymore. If not, we need to raise hell until we get the same buff. 🙂

After a quick test I can confirm that Total Focus activates Energy Focus every time. No lockout as far as I can tell. 

 

The whirling hands debuff was necessary though unfortunate, it was a bit too powerful especially if it was just going to get ported over to the other ATs.

[Coyote]

56 minutes ago, Toxis said:

After a quick test I can confirm that Total Focus activates Energy Focus every time. No lockout as far as I can tell. 

 

The whirling hands debuff was necessary though unfortunate, it was a bit too powerful especially if it was just going to get ported over to the other ATs.

 

It's also not as bad as it appears if you're willing to make up the change via procs. Before, WH did enough damage that I was willing to max out the damage, and also get Recharge up so that I could use it more often. Now, with its damage lowered, I will make up some of the damage via procs, and then I get to have it insta-recharge and re-use the procs. So I lose out on base damage and have to activate it twice... but I get double proc usage out of that. Overall, I think it will actually do more damage in two activations than it did before in one with the damage boost, albeit with a requirement of activating it twice (and with twice the End cost, too). Still, a reasonable benefit that makes the damage nerf less painful. I think.

[Toxis]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

 

It's also not as bad as it appears if you're willing to make up the change via procs. Before, WH did enough damage that I was willing to max out the damage, and also get Recharge up so that I could use it more often. Now, with its damage lowered, I will make up some of the damage via procs, and then I get to have it insta-recharge and re-use the procs. So I lose out on base damage and have to activate it twice... but I get double proc usage out of that. Overall, I think it will actually do more damage in two activations than it did before in one with the damage boost, albeit with a requirement of activating it twice (and with twice the End cost, too). Still, a reasonable benefit that makes the damage nerf less painful. I think.

You make a very valid point!

 

The other benefit is we get Energy Focus consistently and fast even without stun powers. This is a straight buff to our ST attack chain with Power Burst! We shouldn't be seeing the random Focus drop either :)

[Mezmera]

I'm glad they're fixing the mechanic but I detest the change to Whirling Hands.  I get that it'll have the chance to proc more but the damage per animation just got cut in half and I don't want to get caught in an endless Whirling loop trying to make up for what we're losing out on what it was before this.  

 

If they just had to do this to fix whatever was going on with the mechanic so be it but if not then I wish they'd have just left Whirling as it is.