Understanding 'Energy Focus' A Little Better

[Coyote]

Hm. I'm wondering if it will now become a good place to stick the Fiery Orb ATO... insta-recharge on a spammable AoE that only needs to activate on one target with a 2PPM proc means that there will be lots of balls of burning death following me around. And providing stacking stun fields, stacking with the weak Stun from WH. Whirl, Stun, Burn... repeat.

[capricorpse]

26 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Hm. I'm wondering if it will now become a good place to stick the Fiery Orb ATO... insta-recharge on a spammable AoE that only needs to activate on one target with a 2PPM proc means that there will be lots of balls of burning death following me around. And providing stacking stun fields, stacking with the weak Stun from WH. Whirl, Stun, Burn... repeat.

side question - Have you had good results with Fiery Orb?  I had it in Wormhole for a while and never noticed it doing damage, though it spawned nearly every time I used the power.  But maybe in a melee attack it would be better since they can start getting burned right away?  It was always spawning on my location and then had to float over to wherever the enemies were.

[Toxis]

20 hours ago, Mezmera said:

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.  

 

Yeah, I understand that. I appreciate the fix and the consistency but losing the bomb that is Whirling Hands is probably going to alter the feel of the set so much. Going to reserve judgement until it is live and I have my main to test it on with proper teams.

 

Casting twice doesn't seem very intuitive for dominators either. We want less time casting attacks so we can make sure everything is locked down.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Toxis

[Coyote]

1 hour ago, capricorpse said:

side question - Have you had good results with Fiery Orb?  I had it in Wormhole for a while and never noticed it doing damage, though it spawned nearly every time I used the power.  But maybe in a melee attack it would be better since they can start getting burned right away?  It was always spawning on my location and then had to float over to wherever the enemies were.

 

I don't really like to use it on all-ranged characters, for that reason. But if you're in the middle of mobs, then it can be decent. Its max damage over 20 seconds is like 66 damage, which is not impressive for a proc, but it only has to activate on one target to end up doing AoE damage to everyone in its radius, so it works a lot better on large groupings than other AoE damage procs. The downside is the DoT, so if you're playing a character who does high burst damage, it's not that useful. My Electric/Earth Dom uses it, and sits in the middle of a spawn keeping it drained, so it has the chance to activate a lot and to have a decent amount of time to do damage. So it's okay for PBAoE characters. Not great, the damage is too slow, but it's not bad for a single IO. It's also useful on my Fire/Psy Dom, who doesn't have great burst damage and also sits in the mobs. I don't use it on a Plant/Savage, since he moves around a lot and also clears spawns much faster.

 

It also Stuns and draws aggro, which can be useful at low-mid levels. At high levels it's not that useful to draw aggro, since it has no defenses... so anything that can threaten a well-built character in their 40s and up is just going to crush it. So it's more useful on a character at low-mid levels, who is on the lower side of damage for Doms, or most Controllers since their AoE damage is usually more lacking.

[Mezmera]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

Hm. I'm wondering if it will now become a good place to stick the Fiery Orb ATO... insta-recharge on a spammable AoE that only needs to activate on one target with a 2PPM proc means that there will be lots of balls of burning death following me around. And providing stacking stun fields, stacking with the weak Stun from WH. Whirl, Stun, Burn... repeat.

Aiming for the HP buff I 3 slot that set with the orb into my fast charging aoe control like terrify and aoe immobilize powers.  You can only spawn one at a time and with that many available targets it's almost always guaranteed to spawn one.  

 

I have Whirling slotted with a full set of Obliteration's and I don't see any reason to change that.  

Edited October 27, 2020 by Mezmera

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, capricorpse said:

side question - Have you had good results with Fiery Orb?  I had it in Wormhole for a while and never noticed it doing damage, though it spawned nearly every time I used the power.  But maybe in a melee attack it would be better since they can start getting burned right away?  It was always spawning on my location and then had to float over to wherever the enemies were.

The damage is very minor.  It's not a great power and the little orb could use a slight upgrade.  It does draw aggro for you though and it is a minor damage uptick on it's own so if there's an upgrade to it the orb might be quite nice.  

[Mezmera]

44 minutes ago, Toxis said:

 

Yeah, I understand that. I appreciate the fix and the consistency but losing the bomb that is Whirling Hands is probably going to alter the feel of the set so much. Going to reserve judgement until it is live and I have my main to test it on with proper teams.

 

Casting twice doesn't seem very intuitive for dominators either. We want less time casting attacks so we can make sure everything is locked down.

In it's current form it does feel a little too good but on a dom nowadays should that really be any issue?  Constantly spamming Whirling Hands is going to feel very counterproductive to the AT.  If they felt it necessary to nerf it I'd rather they just lowered the extra auto proc damage from 100% to maybe 80%.  

 

Conversely though with the mechanic being always active it means Power Burst and Bone Smasher should always have that extra damage available.  So with the loss on aoe damage by default the change to the mechanic seems to be buffing the ST damage.  

[Toxis]

6 hours ago, capricorpse said:

side question - Have you had good results with Fiery Orb?  I had it in Wormhole for a while and never noticed it doing damage, though it spawned nearly every time I used the power.  But maybe in a melee attack it would be better since they can start getting burned right away?  It was always spawning on my location and then had to float over to wherever the enemies were.

 

Relative to other ATO procs, I rather dislike Fiery Orb. 

 

Other sets dramatically change how good an AT is and I think they should swap this one out for something better.