Focused Feedback: Blaster Secondary Revamp

[Keleko]

I'd like to mention that Reaction Time is still bugged on blaster Martial.  The recovery bonus is not adding to the character total.

[Jimmy]

7 minutes ago, Keleko said:

I'd like to mention that Reaction Time is still bugged on blaster Martial.  The recovery bonus is not adding to the character total.

I believe this should be fixed in the next build.

[Zepp]

3 hours ago, csr said:

I think Burst of Speed is a 15' radius; but it is hard to tell.  I base that on it appearing to be more than 10' and the next standard size being 15'.  Increasing Dragon's Tail's radius to 14' or 15' would reduce its Damage by about 30% (or up it's Recharge to around 17s) to keep it balanced with regard to the standard formula.  Plus, it's just not going to happen, as the power isn't in need of a buff of any kind.

 

Rebalancing BoS to an attack with a utility side effect rather than a power that balances the two is probably not going to happen either.  That 200' teleport with no line of sight required is a pretty serious "side effect".  I can tp from by the SG portal in the RWZ Vanguard base to the targeting dummies.  BoS as a 6s Recharge 15' AoE with a basic side effect (no tp, no 3 times) would have Damage less than half of what it does now.  (Edit:  I haven't tested BoS's tp, but Combat Teleport works for out-of-los tps through assist.  I expect BoS will as well.  That's a major power effect.)

 

Personally, I'd like to see its recharge improved a bit, since it's the signature power of the set, but the numbers you are suggesting are just way out of line.  A 60s Recharge I could see; anything less than that and some part of it would likely be nerfed for balance.  At the extremely short Recharge you're suggesting it would basically end up doing no damage at all and becoming a longer range Combat Teleport.

My testing method was to go adjacent to a mob [ /bind ; PowExecLocation target Combat Teleport ] then use a bind to combat TP a defined distance from the mob [ /bind k PowExecLocation back:## Combat Teleport ] and then I used a bind to Burst of Speed to target my current position [ /bind j powexeclocation self Burst of Speed ] and that is how I found the range to be 14. When I tried 15 I did not hit. (with Dragon's Tail it did hit at 8).

 

60s would still be a 20s cooldown (in a high-recharge build) after the third jump. It would be better, but that is still a pretty significant cooldown that is easy to lose track of.

I don't know if its possible, but I would like to propose the reduction to 60s (which is still really long for this power), but that the power have three cooldowns. So, you can use it three times in succession, but each of those hops has a separate timer before the next hop. So, if you do two hops, wait a minute, and go for the third hop, your first timer is done so you can hop again. Not like it is now where you can hop twice, wait a minute or so, and then be hit by the full timer after the third hop. On paper you are maintaining the unwieldy and excessive cooldown timer at nigh the original absurd level, in practice you are seeing a huge reduction in the timer, while still allowing versatility. (If you got your timer down to 30s, you would be able to jump, on average, once every 10s -- with the current formula, jump, 10s, jump, 10s, jump cd30s; with the hidden cooldowns, jump 10s, jump 10s, jump cd10s) The Cooldowns would be hidden and you would only see a cooldown if you hit the third hop before the first hop's cooldown was up.

[it appears that what actually happens is there is a hidden timer, but it restarts after every jump and if you have two logged jumps and hit the power it will trigger the actual timer (hop, hop, 90s, hop = no cooldown; hop, 45s, hop, 45s, hop = cooldown)] So, the hidden timer mechanism exists, the question is whether it can be made to work in the manner I am proposing.

Would that suit your adherence to the flawed standard damage formula (which doesn't consider DpA) while making the power functional?

[Chris24601]

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I've seen multiple people saying they won't take Oil Slick on their Blasters and I'm just completely baffled by that.

It’s pretty simple and two-fold;

 

A) one of the two powers merged was only ever slotted with just its base slot and the merged power will use all the slots from the other and really need an extra one to meet the performance of the original two... as a result, you can only slot Oil Slick by pulling from other powers you’ve previously slotted.

 

B) unlike the rest of the set, Oil Slick Arrow targets the ground rather than a target. If you’re like me, a person who steers using the old Doom-era arrow keys, then constantly moving between the keyboard and mouse to drop the Slick makes it more trouble than its worth, particularly in light of the first issue which means its not even a super-effective power when it is used.

 

Yes, powexec_location can help (and binding the new /interact command will be a godsend for me), but it’s still quite discordant from the rest of the set.

 

So, I just snagged a single-slot Stealth for a fifth LotG IO and called it a day since I can flip it on when I need more -Per than just Flash Arrow provides.

 

Basically, the Blaster version of Oil Slick Arrow just isn’t good enough to warrant rebuilding an existing toon to take advantage of it.

 

If you wanted a t9 everyone would take; give us a “Boost Range” toggle that moves all those 60’ powers up to the same 80’ that’s on live.

 

Better yet, put ESD Arrow back to hold, make IT the t9 and put in Boost Range as the t8.

[csr]

9 hours ago, Zepp said:

Would that suit your adherence to the flawed standard damage formula (which doesn't consider DpA) while making the power functional?

I think all of us - including Captain Powerhouse - know that the damage formulas are seriously flawed.  But changing that is a massive and highly controversial undertaking.  So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.  And without such a reworking I think you are just going to have to accept that suggesting a major deviation from the formula is almost certainly going to fall on deaf ears with the devs.

 

I suspect Burst of Speed is on a 90 second cooldown right now because the well-established Shield Charge is too.  BoS does similar damage to Scrapper SC, but with twice the Activation Time (both of those from using it 3 times in succession), no KD, and much better TP speed and range.  It's balanced fairly well with SC.  Oh, and it's available at level 10 instead of 26 (Tanker) or 35 (Brute, Scrapper, Stalker),

Edited November 10, 2020 by csr

[csr]

10 hours ago, Keleko said:

I'd like to mention that Reaction Time is still bugged on blaster Martial.  The recovery bonus is not adding to the character total.

 

10 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I believe this should be fixed in the next build.

 

Good, I didn't bother to test all the sustains systematically in this build as it didn't look as if any had been changed.  There were still three that appear to be broken:

• Darkness Manipulation / Touch of the Beyond:  The Fear Protection isn't working.
• Martial Combat / Reaction Time:  The Absorb tick rate doesn't match the description.  And the +Recovery doesn't appear to be working.
• Temporal Manipulation / Temporal Mending:  All components save the Absorb frequently cease to work when you zone (and upon initial log in) and occasionally for no apparent reason.

[Vanden]

23 minutes ago, csr said:

I think all of us - including Captain Powerhouse - know that the damage formulas are seriously flawed.

I think you probably shouldn't put money on that.

[csr]

20 minutes ago, Vanden said:

I think you probably shouldn't put money on that.

True.  I should have said "anyone who has taken a serious look at the formulas" instead of "all of us".  Everybody who has looked at them ought to know that Activation Time being left out is a major issue.   And most people should realize that target caps not being included is also a significant oversight.  Finally, the linear rather than quadratic relationship of the Area Modifier with Radius is also iffy.

[csr]

10 hours ago, Zepp said:

My testing method was to go adjacent to a mob [ /bind ; PowExecLocation target Combat Teleport ] then use a bind to combat TP a defined distance from the mob [ /bind k PowExecLocation back:## Combat Teleport ] and then I used a bind to Burst of Speed to target my current position [ /bind j powexeclocation self Burst of Speed ] and that is how I found the range to be 14. When I tried 15 I did not hit. (with Dragon's Tail it did hit at 8).

That's a good way to test, but it moves you from adjacent to the target instead of at the target.  I'm not sure a 0' attack would hit if you are adjacent to the target.

[Zepp]

16 minutes ago, csr said:

That's a good way to test, but it moves you from adjacent to the target instead of at the target.  I'm not sure a 0' attack would hit if you are adjacent to the target.

I tested the methodology with a known range attack (Dragon's Tail) and found that it hit the appropriate mark of being in range when tested at 8, but being out of range when tested at 9.

1 hour ago, csr said:

I think all of us - including Captain Powerhouse - know that the damage formulas are seriously flawed.  But changing that is a massive and highly controversial undertaking.  So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.  And without such a reworking I think you are just going to have to accept that suggesting a major deviation from the formula is almost certainly going to fall on deaf ears with the devs.

 

I suspect Burst of Speed is on a 90 second cooldown right now because the well-established Shield Charge is too.  BoS does similar damage to Scrapper SC, but with twice the Activation Time (both of those from using it 3 times in succession), no KD, and much better TP speed and range.  It's balanced fairly well with SC.  Oh, and it's available at level 10 instead of 26 (Tanker) or 35 (Brute, Scrapper, Stalker),

Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are alpha strikes. Having them on 90s timers (while longer than they ought to be) is closer to reasonable. Burst of Speed is designed to be more of an attack-chain type attack. And it works that way until you hit that cooldown. There is also the reality that, in practice, BoS is not always used as an attack. It is often used to get in place for Dragon's Tail + Nuke before PowExecLocation back:80 Burst of Speed -ing out of the fray. At least that is how I've seen it used by a couple of players. With Combat Teleport as an option, that may change that math, but the timer is a problem.

 

Also, according to the standard formula, the current damage (if you count all three attacks cumulatively) is much closer to a 60s recharge power than a 90s recharge power. Furthermore, because of the distribution of attacks over time, the actual recharge from the first attack to the end of the recharge cycle is up to 270s.

 

Breaking it from three jumps then recharge to recharge after each attack would make the jump-in/jump-out mechanic less functional (especially at pre-IO levels) but would allow the power to work on a 20s timer without breaking the standard damage formula. That would mean that you could use it as part of an extended attack chain without worrying about the random 30+s timer (in a high recharge build) breaking your flow.

[CaptainLupis]

2 hours ago, csr said:

True.  I should have said "anyone who has taken a serious look at the formulas" instead of "all of us".  Everybody who has looked at them ought to know that Activation Time being left out is a major issue.   And most people should realize that target caps not being included is also a significant oversight.  Finally, the linear rather than quadratic relationship of the Area Modifier with Radius is also iffy.

Activation time isn't the only thing that is usualy ignored, time to impact is as well. There are powers that can be cast and then you can queue, activate and fire your second power before the first has reached the target. While having both hit at the same time can have some benefits, it just makes some powers feels really poor, especially if you are having a long time to impact on top of a long activation time. Needless to say this impacts people that play at long range far more than those in melee range.

[Jimmy]

3 minutes ago, csr said:

 

 

Good, I didn't bother to test all the sustains systematically in this build as it didn't look as if any had been changed.  There were still three that appear to be broken:

• Darkness Manipulation / Touch of the Beyond:  The Fear Protection isn't working.
• Martial Combat / Reaction Time:  The Absorb tick rate doesn't match the description.  And the +Recovery doesn't appear to be working.
• Temporal Manipulation / Temporal Mending:  All components save the Absorb frequently cease to work when you zone (and upon initial log in) and occasionally for no apparent reason.

Please confirm this is all still occurring in the latest build and then post a bug report thread for those so we don’t lose track 🙂

[Zeraphia]

I'm just going to say it, these TA changes are horrible. Sorry, I know you've worked hard on it, and I get that, but seriously not every single set has to be a carbon-copy of one another. Absolutely no one asked for Oil Slick Arrow, nor wanted it honestly. A lot of people are very unhappy that these sets are being toyed with to try to force people into a playstyle that they never wanted or asked for. You are way over-nerfing TA as a set, and you are not providing bonuses to make up for it, and a lot of people are extremely dissatisfied with these changes. Let's list all of the nerfs:
 

Removing the hold to being only on robots and turning ESD Arrow into a stun-only power without additional improvement onto its CCing capability. 

Giving TA a worse variation of Oil Slick than even the defender version that can't accept defense debuff enhancements or procs. 

Making it so Gymnastics and CJ don't combine to give you additional fun bungee jumping. This IMO is one of the most "wtf" ones, this is directly what a lot of people have a lot of fun with, hopping around and enjoying the game. Why did THAT need to be nerfed?

Upshot is radically nerfed from 100% damage to 81.5% damage, 30% tohit to 15% to hit, and 30% recharge to 15% recharge. Seriously? Even Chronos has 20% tohit left on its BU power, the 30 to 15 is ridiculous. 

If you're going to increase the recharge on Ice Arrow, then at bare minimum reduce the cast rate on it. 1.67s is mid-high for hold casts, 1.33s or 1.1s would make the recharge being upped not so bad but you've just hit this set too much.

As for upping the endurance cost of the ST immobilize, this is again stupid to me. Why? Because you're putting this power into a box that it's not in. The power has faster cast times than other ST immobilizes, therefore consumes more endurance faster than other powers. 

 

Seriously rethink these changes, many people are severely disaffected by them and lots of people are talking about shelfing their Archery/TA Blasters. 

[Vulpoid]

Things don't have to be equal between power sets.
It is OK for some things in life to be better than other things.

The only time you should look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough.
You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them. 

[reib]

Energy manipulation Is too click intensive. I have to bind 4(4!) Powers on auto with movement keys (boost range on W, Energize on A, Power boost on D and Hasten on Jump). It's Crazy and useless. Just transform Power boost and boost range to toggle (or Better as auto Powers) imho. Boost range can easily become Perma than wath Is the sense to have It as click? Had to be an auto Power imho. Energize bonuses can be splitted, end discount as auto or toggle and healing aspect as click or auto at the same way as martial do (healing yourself when HP bar go down some percentage).

Edited November 10, 2020 by reib

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

I'm just going to say it, these TA changes are horrible. Sorry, I know you've worked hard on it, and I get that, but seriously not every single set has to be a carbon-copy of one another. Absolutely no one asked for Oil Slick Arrow, nor wanted it honestly. A lot of people are very unhappy that these sets are being toyed with to try to force people into a playstyle that they never wanted or asked for. You are way over-nerfing TA as a set, and you are not providing bonuses to make up for it, and a lot of people are extremely dissatisfied with these changes. Let's list all of the nerfs:
 

Removing the hold to being only on robots and turning ESD Arrow into a stun-only power without additional improvement onto its CCing capability. 

Giving TA a worse variation of Oil Slick than even the defender version that can't accept defense debuff enhancements or procs. 

Making it so Gymnastics and CJ don't combine to give you additional fun bungee jumping. This IMO is one of the most "wtf" ones, this is directly what a lot of people have a lot of fun with, hopping around and enjoying the game. Why did THAT need to be nerfed?

Upshot is radically nerfed from 100% damage to 81.5% damage, 30% tohit to 15% to hit, and 30% recharge to 15% recharge. Seriously? Even Chronos has 20% tohit left on its BU power, the 30 to 15 is ridiculous. 

If you're going to increase the recharge on Ice Arrow, then at bare minimum reduce the cast rate on it. 1.67s is mid-high for hold casts, 1.33s or 1.1s would make the recharge being upped not so bad but you've just hit this set too much.

As for upping the endurance cost of the ST immobilize, this is again stupid to me. Why? Because you're putting this power into a box that it's not in. The power has faster cast times than other ST immobilizes, therefore consumes more endurance faster than other powers. 

 

Seriously rethink these changes, many people are severely disaffected by them and lots of people are talking about shelfing their Archery/TA Blasters. 

Have you played it or is all of this based on just reading the notes?

[csr]

6 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Please confirm this is all still occurring in the latest build and then post a bug report thread for those so we don’t lose track 🙂

I tested those 3 in the current build (#3).  I didn't test all sustains or all components of sustains.  Just the broken parts of the ones I knew weren't working correctly in build #2.

Edited November 10, 2020 by csr

[csr]

7 hours ago, CaptainLupis said:

Activation time isn't the only thing that is usualy ignored, time to impact is as well. There are powers that can be cast and then you can queue, activate and fire your second power before the first has reached the target. While having both hit at the same time can have some benefits, it just makes some powers feels really poor, especially if you are having a long time to impact on top of a long activation time. Needless to say this impacts people that play at long range far more than those in melee range.

That is an issue.  But including it in the damage formula would be a bit iffy unless you are going to have damage scale off the range to target when cast and make it counter-intuitively greater when further away.  I think balancing slow projectiles is more of a per-power thing than a damage formula thing.  Slow projectile attacks should probably consistently have better secondary effects.

[csr]

9 hours ago, Zepp said:

I tested the methodology with a known range attack (Dragon's Tail) and found that it hit the appropriate mark of being in range when tested at 8, but being out of range when tested at 9.

 

Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are alpha strikes. Having them on 90s timers (while longer than they ought to be) is closer to reasonable. Burst of Speed is designed to be more of an attack-chain type attack. And it works that way until you hit that cooldown. There is also the reality that, in practice, BoS is not always used as an attack. It is often used to get in place for Dragon's Tail + Nuke before PowExecLocation back:80 Burst of Speed -ing out of the fray. At least that is how I've seen it used by a couple of players. With Combat Teleport as an option, that may change that math, but the timer is a problem.

 

Also, according to the standard formula, the current damage (if you count all three attacks cumulatively) is much closer to a 60s recharge power than a 90s recharge power. Furthermore, because of the distribution of attacks over time, the actual recharge from the first attack to the end of the recharge cycle is up to 270s.

 

Breaking it from three jumps then recharge to recharge after each attack would make the jump-in/jump-out mechanic less functional (especially at pre-IO levels) but would allow the power to work on a 20s timer without breaking the standard damage formula. That would mean that you could use it as part of an extended attack chain without worrying about the random 30+s timer (in a high recharge build) breaking your flow.

Let's call it effectively 14' then.

 

BoS being a dual use power is a bit of a drawback, and Combat Teleport will step on the toes of one of the uses.  There's no question about that.  So perhaps BoS deserves a buff.

 

The straight one-use 20s Recharge mini Shield Charge version certainly has some appeal (to me at least), but it ceases to be a utility power and is just an attack.  It would basically do the damage of Psychic Shockwave or Deafening Wave with a different secondary effect.

 

As for the 270s cycle time.  The power still only has 90s of base cooldown plus 3s of activation time, the rest is from not using it when available.  If you're trying to maximize damage you could use BoS every time it is reasonable to use it.  When you do that it does about 75% of the damage of Lightning Rod on a Scrapper in just a touch more time, with a much longer range and less chance of overkill, but without the fairly reliable KD mitigation.  It's still in the neighborhood performance-wise of those similar powers (LR and Shield Charge), so for any suggested change to be seriously considered I think it's going to have to be a minor buff at best, or simply a clever mechanic that captures someone's fancy.

Edited November 10, 2020 by csr

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

Have you played it or is all of this based on just reading the notes?

Played it. Spent considerable time trying to work around the changes... ultimately decided I'd probably just shelve my Archery/Tac Arrow rather than go through all the work since the needed changes to my build only actually fully work at level 30+.

 

The changes aren't good and are fundamentally changing the way you have to play the set.

 

Even worse... the things that have ultimately been nerfed AREN'T what these changes imply. The actual nerfs to my build? Making it more annoying to exemp below 30, about 10 million influence to swap out enhancements for ones to counteract the changes and a serious doubt as to whether I even want to bother with the changes on Live over shelving it and rolling yet another Scrapper because at least they aren't completely changing the way my sets on them play.

 

The funny thing is we already have an example of a secondary set with more range (mental manipulation) and secondary debuffs (honestly, I didn't know "range" was considered mental's schtick until it was brought up here... I thought -recharge was its thing based on the secondary effects of Mind Probe, Psychic Scream and Psychic Shockwave).

 

There is NO reason for extra range to be exclusive to psychic, particularly when psychic has other secondary effects (the aforementioned -recharge), given that Tactical Arrow has no specific shtick to it other than using bow animations. Atomic has -Def, Darkness -ToHit, Electric -End, Fire has DoT, Cold has -Speed... but what is Tac Arrow's special?

 

I vote its special should be RANGE.

[Super Homer]

16 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

The funny thing is we already have an example of a secondary set with more range (mental manipulation) and secondary debuffs (honestly, I didn't know "range" was considered mental's schtick until it was brought up here...

Check out Psi Blast for Corruptors and Defenders. The attacks have 100ft range instead of 80ft. The snipes 175 instead of 150.

The blaster version is messed up and they should fix that.

[Crasical]

Okay, so I dropped in as a Dual Pistols/Ninja Training blaster to compare and contrast:

 

First off, subjectively, I had a blast. The new stances made the character feel ridiculous and over the top, staying in the ninja stance with the dual pistols and the katana was a ton of fun.

 

Didn't really use Immobilizing dart, so while it might be much improved I just generally don't think to activate it. Between Suppressive Fire and Choking Powder I have two holds, so I generally don't go reaching for the immob. No real comment.

 

Sting of the Wasp, The Lotus Drops, and Golden Dragonfly feel good. I felt like hauling out the katana was worthwhile now, rather than something I did just to show off or because everything else was on cooldown. The shift towards longer recharge but more impactful damage was a good move, I can use them to finish off enemies now (and Golden Dragonfly is really damaging in its own right.

 

But now I gotta talk about Shinobi, which is more and more becoming a core piece of kit for Ninja Training:

First up, giving it movement boosts is good. 👍 I use Experimentation, so zooming around at superspeeds and being able to properly leap over obstacles made navigation easy and pleasant, and I did have Jaunt for things to tall for me to just jump over.

 

The bad, however: It doesn't take Movement IOs, so I can't put a Celerity in there to make myself fully invisible; which means that dropping a blinding powder before attacking often doesn't work the way it should (I get spotted maneuvering in to deploy its short cone). This meant I tried to do a workaround of putting the stealth IO in Speed of Sound, but then I ran into another problem: The rework of 'primary pool movement boosters'. When I got into combat, Speed of Sound would suppress, and the higher value of Speed of Sound didn't move in to replace it, I just went to normal speed. This was...not great. I'd really suggest removing the whole stacking thing and letting that just be a fringe benefit of those few powersets. I'd also like to politely request that this version of Shinobi be given the ability to slot travel IOs just so that it matches the scrapper version of the powerset. 

 

The ugly: I think that the bonus crit-damage from this new version of Shinobi isn't working right when combined with Swap Ammo. I was seeing damage numbers that looked to be about 80% of the *lethal* portion of the shots, rather than 80% of the entire damage of my shots. It looked to be working about right when I used Golden Dragonfly and Sting of the Wasp, so I think it's the weird way pistols work that's the root problem.

 

 

 

EDIT: Apologies, didn't see the earlier post about it giving you the *base* damage of the power, in that case the crits are probably correct.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Crasical
Added damage log

[Chris24601]

2 hours ago, Super Homer said:

Check out Psi Blast for Corruptors and Defenders. The attacks have 100ft range instead of 80ft. The snipes 175 instead of 150.

The blaster version is messed up and they should fix that.

Regardless, my point that Psi doesn't have to be the only set with "extended" range (I mean, really, we're asking for it to be the same range as an ordinary primary attack) stands.

 

Tac Arrow lacks a cohesive shtick like Fire's damage over time or Dark's to-hit debuffs. I suggest that Range makes just as much sense as its shtick as any of those, particularly since it only brings it to the same range as the Archery primary and relies entirely on ranged attacks with no melee options in the mix.

[Wavicle]

22 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

Regardless, my point that Psi doesn't have to be the only set with "extended" range (I mean, really, we're asking for it to be the same range as an ordinary primary attack) stands.

 

Tac Arrow lacks a cohesive shtick like Fire's damage over time or Dark's to-hit debuffs. I suggest that Range makes just as much sense as its shtick as any of those, particularly since it only brings it to the same range as the Archery primary and relies entirely on ranged attacks with no melee options in the mix.

Tac Arrow's shtick is that it's a Blaster version of Trick Arrow.

[Blackbird71]

42 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Tac Arrow's shtick is that it's a Blaster version of Trick Arrow.

I don't think you understand what a "shtick" is.