Focused Feedback: Energy Melee Revamp

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

It is hard to hit the target cap with power crash, but it is with most cones.

 

I can do about 8 on a Tanker if i line them up well without the EF buff and about 12 with the EF buff. I think the target cap is achievable, just not very easily.

 

Compared to Dark Melee's Shadow Maul i found SM easier to hit more targets. PC has longer range but SM has a wider arc on a Tanker, i guess the wider arc works better but it would depend on how the mobs are stacked.

 

But PC isn't that bad really. Seems a little clunky with setting up the EF buff though so i probably just won't bother using EF with it unless i am dead set on clearing a lot of trash. Comparing to Dark melee for example the AoE is near on par but the single target damage of EM is way above DM.

 

For me Energy focus will be spent on ET only with it's fast recharge. The rest doesn't really interest me.

Can you double check your testing, there are some things you stated that shouldn't be true.

 

1) You mention being able to hit 12 tgts using PC with EF, but can only get 8 tgts using PC w/o EF. PC has a base max of 10 tgts on a tanker, so if you're able to get 12 with EF, you should be able to hit 10 w/o EF.

 

2) You said it's easier to hit targets using Shadow Maul over Power Crash, yet PC has a 10 ft radius versus SM's 7 ft radius, and both have a 120 degree arc that should not be buffed by Tanker's inherent (the cut-off for increasing arc is supposed to be a base arc of 90 degree, iirc).

 

Can you provide evidence of either of those things you stated? If either are true, you will have found a bug. 

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

Compared to Dark Melee's Shadow Maul i found SM easier to hit more targets. PC has longer range but SM has a wider arc on a Tanker, i guess the wider arc works better but it would depend on how the mobs are stacked.

Looks like you did identify a bug. I went to look at the power info for Shadow Maul to see if there was truth to your statement and I did find something. PC has a 10' radius and 120 degree arc, SM has a 7' radius and 120 degree arc, HOWEVER, PC (and wide cone powers like it) are flagged to Disallow Arc Strength (thus, ignore Tanker inherent). Shadow Maul does not have this same flag. It likely was overlooked because the Tanker inherent went into effect in Page 4, whereas Shadow Maul had its arc increased from 45 degrees to 120 degrees in Page 5. It is certainly possible the Arc Strength Disallowed Flag was overlooked.

[Myrmidon]

Power Crash is one more AoE/Cone that can be used to maintain aggro when members of the team decide that activities like Congo line immobilizing and massive Knockback are something that we should all participate in.

[Gobbledigook]

3 hours ago, Bopper said:

Looks like you did identify a bug. I went to look at the power info for Shadow Maul to see if there was truth to your statement and I did find something. PC has a 10' radius and 120 degree arc, SM has a 7' radius and 120 degree arc, HOWEVER, PC (and wide cone powers like it) are flagged to Disallow Arc Strength (thus, ignore Tanker inherent). Shadow Maul does not have this same flag. It likely was overlooked because the Tanker inherent went into effect in Page 4, whereas Shadow Maul had its arc increased from 45 degrees to 120 degrees in Page 5. It is certainly possible the Arc Strength Disallowed Flag was overlooked.

Yes shadowmaul seems to allow the Tankers extra arc. It is quite noticeable when you use how wider it hits. I don't know whether it was overlooked or was allowed to be like this though.  Wider and shorter seems to work better though.

 

Perhaps it should be allowed as the skill has a target cap anyway, it just makes it a little easier to hit the cap.

 

10 can be hit with PC with no buff but not easily, takes a little maneuvering. Sometimes it will hit only 4 or 5 and that is being completely surrounded by mobs. But I have managed 12 with the buff up but not 16 as of yet. So yes 10 is doable, just not on average.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[Bopper]

18 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

Yes shadowmaul seems to allow the Tankers extra arc. It is quite noticeable when you use how wider it hits. I don't know whether it was overlooked or was allowed to be like this though.  Wider and shorter seems to work better though.

 

Perhaps it should be allowed as the skill has a target cap anyway, it just makes it a little easier to hit the cap.

Tanks can still hit 10, which is standard for a tanker cone (only a few hit 16). 90 degrees seems to be the cut-off for allowing cones to have the +50% arc buff. Slice and Flashing Steel were two powers that had their Arc decreased for tanker to allow the inherent buff, so their 130 degree arcs were reduced to 90 (135 after buff).

 

I reviewed each attack and it seems there are no cones with an arc greater than 90 degrees that has the inherent arc buff.  

[Gobbledigook]

3 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Tanks can still hit 10, which is standard for a tanker cone (only a few hit 16). 90 degrees seems to be the cut-off for allowing cones to have the +50% arc buff. Slice and Flashing Steel were two powers that had their Arc decreased for tanker to allow the inherent buff, so their 130 degree arcs were reduced to 90 (135 after buff).

 

I reviewed each attack and it seems there are no cones with an arc greater than 90 degrees that has the inherent arc buff.  

But SM does? It certainly feels wider at times.

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[Bopper]

4 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

But SM does? It certainly feels wider at times.

 

SM has a 120 degree cone, so if it's getting the arc buff, it's increasing to 180.

[Gobbledigook]

26 minutes ago, Bopper said:

SM has a 120 degree cone, so if it's getting the arc buff, it's increasing to 180.

Yes I always thought it was for Tankers. I presumed because of the lack of AoE in the set.

 

It is much nicer to use though lol. I hope it stays if it is true as having 2 powers in Dark Melee that struggle to hit target cap, with Touch of Fear with its 6ft radius being the other,  would not be good.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[0th Power]

So.... Power Crash should have a wider arc for tankers??  If so, it might not be a waste of energy focus.

[Gobbledigook]

54 minutes ago, 0th Power said:

So.... Power Crash should have a wider arc for tankers??  If so, it might not be a waste of energy focus.

No. PC states it is not affected by the increased Arc but Shadow maul does not state that at all. Whether intended or error.

 

SM does seem to hit targets on the far right or left of the hero now and then but not conclusive. I have not seen it hit more than 10 targets on the test servers.

 

Although i got this a few times. what does the forced to hit by streak breaker mean? @Bopper

 

Shadow Maul is recharged.
You activated the Shadow Maul power.
Gunfighter MISSES! Swipe power had a 6.50% chance to hit, but rolled a 99.74.
HIT Wavequake! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 47.12.
HIT Dazz! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 12.24.
HIT Empress Inversonia I! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 44.08.
MISSED Gunfighter!! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.14.
HIT American Eagle! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 32.44.
HIT Fuzzy Yum Yum! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 6.14.
HIT Halo Jones! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 15.78.
HIT White Dwarf! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 3.25.
HIT Ephyria! Your Shadow Maul power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.
HIT Agent Kiski! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 80.28.
HIT NiteLash! Your Shadow Maul power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 21.49.
Wavequake MISSES! Swipe power had a 7.48% chance to hit, but rolled a 88.42.
Agent Kiski MISSES! Swipe power had a 7.48% chance to hit, but rolled a 98.89.
White Dwarf MISSES! Strike power had a 7.48% chance to hit, but rolled a 27.73.
VuDu Dawl MISSES! Swipe power had a 7.48% chance to hit, but rolled a 75.40.
Crimson Gypsy MISSES! Swipe power had a 7.48% chance to hit, but rolled a 8.61.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[Wavicle]

53 minutes ago, 0th Power said:

So.... Power Crash should have a wider arc for tankers??  If so, it might not be a waste of energy focus.

Higher target cap, same arc.

[0th Power]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

Higher target cap, same arc.

I'm aware of that, but they were talking of a bug a few posts up.

[siolfir]

1 minute ago, 0th Power said:

I'm aware of that, but they were talking of a bug a few posts up.

The bug is probably in Tanker Shadow Maul allowing the arc buff, but that's for @Captain Powerhouse to decide.

 

An arc reduction to 90 degrees on PC on the Tanker version only, while removing the flag to ignore the Tanker inherent buff, would allow it to be 135 degrees instead of 120 (and theoretically it should also do more base damage per the design formulas, but since the "nerf" is just to widen the actual arc that may not happen). Just removing the flag would have it hit 180 degrees, like Shadow Maul is doing. Or it could be left as-is, and the Tanker inherent is just the higher target cap.

[Bopper]

59 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

Although i got this a few times. what does the forced to hit by streak breaker mean?

That's a game mechanic that removes too much bad luck from RNG. It will allow only so many misses before forcing a hit

 

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

Edited November 16, 2020 by Bopper

[Saulty_Dawg1992]

On 11/14/2020 at 5:29 PM, Infinitum said:

I have a few 🙂 I'll have to send them to you in forum format if thats ok.

Sure thing! You can message them to me if you want. 🙂

[Vanden]

Power mechanics question time. AFAIK, the new Energy Transfer and Total Focus are the only examples of powers that do multiple things on a critical in the entire game. As I understood it, previously, it was only possible to tie one effect to critical hits. For example, a power that does damage as a DoT would have to do its critical damage in one big lump, out of sync with the base damage, because if, for example, a power that does X ticks of Y damage was told to have a 5% chance of doing W ticks of Z damage, every single one of those second set of ticks would have its own 5% chance of occurring. This is also why every attack that splits its damage over multiple damage types has a critical that does only one type of damage.

 

Since I've seen no reports of Total Focus doing extra damage on a crit without giving 2 stacks of Focus, nor of Energy Transfer doing extra damage without also healing the player, or vices versa, and never experienced it myself, does that mean this old limitation has been overcome? Is it now possible for powers to do critical hits as damage over time, or critical hits split over multiple damage types?

[aethereal]

41 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Power mechanics question time. AFAIK, the new Energy Transfer and Total Focus are the only examples of powers that do multiple things on a critical in the entire game. As I understood it, previously, it was only possible to tie one effect to critical hits. For example, a power that does damage as a DoT would have to do its critical damage in one big lump, out of sync with the base damage, because if, for example, a power that does X ticks of Y damage was told to have a 5% chance of doing W ticks of Z damage, every single one of those second set of ticks would have its own 5% chance of occurring. This is also why every attack that splits its damage over multiple damage types has a critical that does only one type of damage.

 

Since I've seen no reports of Total Focus doing extra damage on a crit without giving 2 stacks of Focus, nor of Energy Transfer doing extra damage without also healing the player, or vices versa, and never experienced it myself, does that mean this old limitation has been overcome? Is it now possible for powers to do critical hits as damage over time, or critical hits split over multiple damage types?

Yes, the old limitation has been overcome, there are now possibly multiple effects in each effect group.  The effect group is the one with the random condition, then any number of effects can be tied to it.  It's new in HC or maybe Score, was not available on Live.

[Bopper]

47 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Power mechanics question time. AFAIK, the new Energy Transfer and Total Focus are the only examples of powers that do multiple things on a critical in the entire game. As I understood it, previously, it was only possible to tie one effect to critical hits. For example, a power that does damage as a DoT would have to do its critical damage in one big lump, out of sync with the base damage, because if, for example, a power that does X ticks of Y damage was told to have a 5% chance of doing W ticks of Z damage, every single one of those second set of ticks would have its own 5% chance of occurring. This is also why every attack that splits its damage over multiple damage types has a critical that does only one type of damage.

 

Since I've seen no reports of Total Focus doing extra damage on a crit without giving 2 stacks of Focus, nor of Energy Transfer doing extra damage without also healing the player, or vices versa, and never experienced it myself, does that mean this old limitation has been overcome? Is it now possible for powers to do critical hits as damage over time, or critical hits split over multiple damage types?

It already is being done on live. Stalker Hemorrhage does multiple critical hit dots from Hide (it's bugged, and Issue 27 is turning these crit dots into upfront damage, sadly, but it currently is in the game)

[Arkterusss]

On 11/6/2020 at 11:51 AM, Gobbledegook said:

Do you really think they would leave the damage of TF-ET untouched if they allowed full crits?

 

High damage none/low crit is more consistent damage. 

 

If you want full crit damage then the base damage would probably for balance sakes be lowered considerably and you won't even get a heal either.

 

I would quit whilst your'e ahead. EM is in a very good place.

Which doesn't really make much sense if you take a look at Devasting Blow from Rad Melee. It shares the same animation with ET, has a smidge longer cast time, but can full crit.  For that reason alone I've never understood the fetish about "Can't let ET full crit dude, it's too much!" attitude, honestly.

[Gobbledigook]

1 hour ago, Arkterusss said:

Which doesn't really make much sense if you take a look at Devasting Blow from Rad Melee. It shares the same animation with ET, has a smidge longer cast time, but can full crit.  For that reason alone I've never understood the fetish about "Can't let ET full crit dude, it's too much!" attitude, honestly.

Devastating blow is more comparable with Total Focus. ET is an extra follow up attack that does even more damage than TF or DB and is 2.5 times faster to animate and half the recharge time. Energy melee has 2 extremely high damaging attacks compared to Rad Melee's one.

 

So if Rad melee had full crit Devastating Blow and then Radiation Siphon with a 1 second cast time and double damage as a follow up with full crit that would be fine?

 

25 second pylon times here we come 😛

Edited November 18, 2020 by Gobbledegook

[siolfir]

6 hours ago, Arkterusss said:

Which doesn't really make much sense if you take a look at Devasting Blow from Rad Melee. It shares the same animation with ET, has a smidge longer cast time, but can full crit.  For that reason alone I've never understood the fetish about "Can't let ET full crit dude, it's too much!" attitude, honestly.

Rad Melee was brought up earlier in the thread (I know it's a slog to go through, that's why I'm addressing it again here). It was my example of a power that has a full critical for why we could increase the damage on Total Focus criticals, because it does scale 3.08 damage (without Contamination), and can generate Contamination on a target, and does scale 3.08 critical damage for a total of 6.16 on a critical, while Total Focus is capped at scale 4.56.

 

It wasn't specifically answered but the next patch saw a 28% damage critical for Energy Transfer, which previously had no critical damage (instead healing instead of hurting you), recharges faster than Total Focus, and does more base damage. So I think this is about all the critical damage we can expect out of the set.

[Bopper]

54 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Rad Melee was brought up earlier in the thread (I know it's a slog to go through, that's why I'm addressing it again here). It was my example of a power that has a full critical for why we could increase the damage on Total Focus criticals, because it does scale 3.08 damage (without Contamination), and can generate Contamination on a target, and does scale 3.08 critical damage for a total of 6.16 on a critical, while Total Focus is capped at scale 4.56.

 

It wasn't specifically answered but the next patch saw a 28% damage critical for Energy Transfer, which previously had no critical damage (instead healing instead of hurting you), recharges faster than Total Focus, and does more base damage. So I think this is about all the critical damage we can expect out of the set.

In that example, I don't believe Devastating Blow does anything other than damage. Total Focus does an extra Energy Focus grant and Energy Transfer does a heal.

[siolfir]

3 hours ago, Bopper said:

In that example, I don't believe Devastating Blow does anything other than damage. Total Focus does an extra Energy Focus grant and Energy Transfer does a heal.

Well, it also can do extra damage on Contaminated targets, too. I personally think that the expectation of more critical damage out of the set is unfounded without (at least) losing the self-heal in Energy Transfer, but I wanted to address the point brought up about Devastating Blow, and that I brought it up a couple of patches ago hoping for more critical damage on Total Focus, and ended up getting more potential critical damage because it was put on Energy Transfer instead.

[Bopper]

23 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Well, it also can do extra damage on Contaminated targets, too. I personally think that the expectation of more critical damage out of the set is unfounded without (at least) losing the self-heal in Energy Transfer, but I wanted to address the point brought up about Devastating Blow, and that I brought it up a couple of patches ago hoping for more critical damage on Total Focus, and ended up getting more potential critical damage because it was put on Energy Transfer instead.

I was referring only to the critical hit effects. The power can do more damage via Contamination but the critical hit won't do more damage. Much like Crushing Uppercut can do more damage with combos, but the critical hit won't do more damage. Here is a breakdown of each of these crits.

 

Devastating Blow Critical Effects (things that have a chance roll when landing a hit)

• 3.08 scale Energy Damage

Whereas Total Focus now gets these Critical Effects

• 1.00 scale Energy Damage
• 1 Energy Focus Token

 

And Energy Transfer gets:

• 1.2768 scale Energy Damage
• does not take 10% base HP amount of Special Damage
• Heals 10% base HP

 

So you're right, TF and ET won't get more damage added unless you remove the additional critical effect benefits.

 

[Hew]

3 minutes ago, Bopper said:

 

 

So you're right, TF and ET won't get more damage added unless you remove the additional critical effect benefits.

 

Let's not, shall we? 🙂