Procs Revamp Suggestion

[aethereal]

So the devs have stated that they're going to take a look at procs.  It seems possible that we're at the right time in the dev cycle to actually have an impact on what, conceptually, they do (unlike Energy Melee, guys, you really need to let it go).  So I thought I'd create a clearinghouse thread.

 

Here are my problems with the current PPM framework:

 

1.  It really rewards a narrow range of powers.

 

You kinda want a power with like a 15-20 second base recharge time.  Any more recharge time than that is wasted, any less and your proc rate drops precipitously.  If you have a power that is perfectly hovering at the edge of the point where you get a 90% proc rate, then a normal damage proc adds 64.575 damage expected to the power without any ED concerns -- that's way more than a damage enhancement at that scale of power would add (roughly: even a high end IO adds at most about 50% damage to a power, powers with a 15 second recharge time don't do 130 damage).  But get longer recharge, damage procs are less exciting, get shorter, they're less exciting.  This is just...  weird.  We shouldn't be pouring through sets looking for powers that have a 15 second recharge time.

 

2.  They're very independent of the actual power.

 

The only thing a proc cares about is "can I be slotted in this power," "what's this power's AoE," and "what's this power's recharge time."  A minimal-damage hold is exactly the same as a high damage blast etc.  It kind of robs sets of individuality.  A lot of normal CoH is about managing factors that build up your damage normally -- it sucks that procs ignore scrap/stalk crits, ignores build-up and other damage boosters, ignores almost everything except getting into a power with the right recharge time.

 

3.  It puts more pressure on slotting for global recharge

 

Global recharge was plenty good before it was a way to triple the DPS contribution of your procs.

 

Here are things I do not mind about procs:

 

1.  They allow low-damage ATs to close some of the damage gap with high-damage ATs.

 

The supremacy of blasters and scrappers/brutes does not seem to me to be empirically threatened by current proc mechanics.  We aren't seeing everyone just run defenders.  You give up a lot to cram 3+ procs in your five main attack powers, and I think there's a pretty good tradeoff right now in terms of how much you have to give up to get a damage boost.  My testing with, for example, extremely heavily procced out tanks does not suggest that they can get brute-like damage from procs.

[aethereal]

Okay, some actual suggestions:

 

1.  Base proc rate (or scalar) on unenhanced recharge (plus animation time)

 

Due to ED, it is fairly trivially possible to get more global recharge than local recharge.  We don't gain much "balance" by scaling proc rate to local recharge, when global recharge is the controlling factor for how fast the power actually recharges.  Doing this removes complexity and newbie traps.  Reduce PPMs or change the formula as appropriate, and then just let recharge be recharge.

 

2.  Either replace proc rate with a scalar, or create schedules of proc damage

 

For procs that do damage or healing or other scalar values (as opposed to ones that, for example, proc a stun or +2 mag hold or whatever), introduce something that allows a low-damage, fast-recharge power to proc at a reasonable rate, but for lower damage (or healing value, or whatever).  That might mean just changing the proc formula to being a modifier on the damage.  So instead of proccing for 71 damage 50% of the time, proc for 36 damage 100% of the time (or instead of 71 damage 10% of the time, 7.1 damage 100% of the time).  Or perhaps fix proc rate to 50% and then scale damage appropriately.

 

Or create a few schedules, so schedule A might be 30 damage, schedule B 50 damage, schedule C 70 damage, schedule E 90 damage, and have powers define which schedule they proc.

 

This gets us out of being so interested in "sweet spot" powers that are more than 10 seconds, and ideally more than 15 seconds, of recharge time.  You can also use this to tune the AoE stuff a little better, I think.