Dark Blast - Nightfall, Torrent, and Umbral Torrent. Beat that horse corpse.

[Tad Cooper]

I have a five part plan.

1.) Give Defenders and Corruptors Umbral Torrent and Aim from the Blaster version of the set. Replace Nightfall and Torrent. They're both different flavors of bad, slow and weak respectively, which is presumably why they got taken out of the Blaster version.

2.) Add un-enhanceable Knockback Protection of the same magnitude as Umbral Torrent minus point one (or whatever it takes to convert it to knock down) to Tenebrous Tentacles. Similar to controller immobilizes.

3.) Add 98.5% Enhancement (Knockback) to Aim. I think that's the effect anyway. I'm looking at Power Build Up in Mid's. Maybe enhance -ToHit too. T H E M A T I C. Change the power name if necessary. Spooky Focus! Nebulous Concentration! Goth Flex!

4.) Make both cones the same size. Range 60, 40 degree arc sounds reasonable to me, though I know there are formulas for these things that I'm totally ignoring.

5.) Observe how the two cones now make a logical one-two punch. The change to Aim adds a layer of positioning control.

Bonus step 6.) Dark Pit sucks. It needs something. Anything! Increased mag, decreased recharge time, increased duration, add some damage. Increase that stupid 60% base accuracy at the least. Throwaway power.

Why yes, the cone sizes have been brought up many times before, and I did come up with this entire scheme to not have to use Sudden Acceleration! Thank you for noticing. I thought it was pretty clever too.

 

_{I can see you typing /jranger.}

[Solarverse]

I'm sorry, but I hate everything about Torrent or Umbral Torrent. I absolutely love Nightfall, the animation, the visual effects, the DoT's, everything. The only thing I dislike about it is the narrow cone and I wish the cone were much wider....however, I would take that over Torrent or Umbral Torrent any day.

With Torrent or Umbral Torrent I simply can't stand the Knock Back, I absolutely hate the weak animation, the weak Visual Effects...it is just an ugly power that doesn't do much for me mechanically either. If anything I would like to see those powers gone and replaced. However, I won't request that because I know some players actually like Torrent, so I don't request it to get removed. So please, don't request Nightfall be removed either.

[Uun]

Adding -8.3 kb to Tenebrous Tentacles creates a whole new set of problems. A while back the devs eliminated -kb from AoE immobilizes (your reference to controller immobilizes is incorrect). With your suggested change, what happens if someone uses TT on somebody's Ice Slick or Earthquake (which are both less than mag 1)? You've now neutered their AoE control.

 

While I'm all for fixing the arc sizes and ranges, slotting a KB>KD isn't that much trouble if you don't want the KB. I can't support your suggestion.

[Tad Cooper]

7 minutes ago, Uun said:

Adding -8.3 kb to Tenebrous Tentacles creates a whole new set of problems. A while back the devs eliminated -kb from AoE immobilizes (your reference to controller immobilizes is incorrect). With your suggested change, what happens if someone uses TT on somebody's Ice Slick or Earthquake (which are both less than mag 1)? You've now neutered their AoE control.

 

While I'm all for fixing the arc sizes and ranges, slotting a KB>KD isn't that much trouble if you don't want the KB. I can't support your suggestion.

Ok, I double checked. As far as I can tell every controller immobilize except Chain Fences from Electric Control and the Crushes from Gravity Control have either knockup protection or 10000% resistance to knock. The shots with Ouroboros in the background are from live, the green ones are from Brainstorm. If the 10000% resistance works to avoid your concern let's add that instead. Not quite as neat as I'd envisioned but still let's people who absolutely hate knockback avoid it.

 

[Outrider_01]

8 hours ago, Tad Cooper said:

6.) Dark Pit sucks. It needs something. Anything! Increased mag, decreased recharge time, increased duration, add some damage. Increase that stupid 60% base accuracy at the least. Throwaway power.

Check the Issue 27 release, but might be a specific blaster change.  Increase recharge to 90 sec and a magnitude change 

Edited November 5, 2020 by Outrider_01

[Tad Cooper]

32 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Check the Issue 27 release, but might be a specific blaster change.  Increase recharge to 90 sec and a magnitude change 

It is. And that's a nerf. They made the blaster version as bad as the defender/corruptor version. So it's a throwaway for everyone now! Woo! Notably I just checked in game and the accuracy was increased to 80% at some point but not updated in Mid's, so that's something.

Edited November 5, 2020 by Tad Cooper

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Tad Cooper said:

Ok, I double checked. As far as I can tell every controller immobilize except Chain Fences from Electric Control and the Crushes from Gravity Control have either knockup protection or 10000% resistance to knock. The shots with Ouroboros in the background are from live, the green ones are from Brainstorm. If the 10000% resistance works to avoid your concern let's add that instead. Not quite as neat as I'd envisioned but still let's people who absolutely hate knockback avoid it.

I checked in game and those descriptions are still there, however, they definitely changed something so that you can use immobilizes on KD patches. I just tested it with my earth/earth dom. I can use stone prison and stone cages on top of earthquake and they still flop like fishes. Not sure if they could do the same thing with Umbral Torrent/TT.

[Greycat]

I'll take Nightfall over Aim, thanks. I like Nightfall. The look, the DOT, everything.

 

As for torrent - Not sure what you're seeing. Especially if running a dark/dark, it's quite useful (as is Dark Pit, there.)

 

Drop tar patch. Drop pit on it, too. Should anything still work its way out, Torrent pushes them back in. Works quite nicely. Even if you're not dark/dark, it's an effective positioning tool as is right now.

 

Don't like the KB, you have an option which you're aware of already. So pretty much this:

2 hours ago, Uun said:

While I'm all for fixing the arc sizes and ranges, slotting a KB>KD isn't that much trouble if you don't want the KB. I can't support your suggestion.

[MTeague]

I like Torrent.  No, I don't reach for it as a damage power, but KB is still very nice to buy time and act as soft control / mitigation.  Yes, when not soloing I take care to use it to shove things into a corner, but an enemy that is on their butt is not attacking you or anyone else.  And I just like the look of them being swept away by a black mire. 

 

Nightfall, I just wish the animation didn't include the... for lack of a better term... "Dark Bullets".  I'd rather an animation that has exactly the same time as it does now, but included one sweep of blackness vs pew-pew-pew with shadow bolts.  Still.  Animation issues, hopefully, in time, can just be a matter of adding additional choices when the devs think it's a good time to add some. 

[Solarverse]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

I like Torrent.  No, I don't reach for it as a damage power, but KB is still very nice to buy time and act as soft control / mitigation.  Yes, when not soloing I take care to use it to shove things into a corner, but an enemy that is on their butt is not attacking you or anyone else.  And I just like the look of them being swept away by a black mire. 

 

Nightfall, I just wish the animation didn't include the... for lack of a better term... "Dark Bullets".  I'd rather an animation that has exactly the same time as it does now, but included one sweep of blackness vs pew-pew-pew with shadow bolts.  Still.  Animation issues, hopefully, in time, can just be a matter of adding additional choices when the devs think it's a good time to add some. 

I'm just the opposite, it's the "pew pew pew pew pew pew" that I absolutely love about it. It's one of the main reasons I take it. When you use it with the Soul optional graphics, it makes it look like you are firing off several evil souls into somebody. Different folks different strokes, but I would really hate to lose that visual effects. Anything as an option I am game, always will be, just as long as they don't take away what it already there.

[MTeague]

11 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

I'm just the opposite, it's the "pew pew pew pew pew pew" that I absolutely love about it. It's one of the main reasons I take it. When you use it with the Soul optional graphics, it makes it look like you are firing off several evil souls into somebody. Different folks different strokes, but I would really hate to lose that visual effects. Anything as an option I am game, always will be, just as long as they don't take away what it already there.

Well the good news is they have pretty much zero incentive to actually REMOVE any existing animation option. 

So I imagine Nightfall will always have the pew-pew-pew as the default, whether or not it gains more choices later.

[carroto]

I would take any change that allowed me to have a second cone that could actually hit a good number of enemies.  Nightfall as it stands is just too narrow.  I've taken to skipping it and proccing up Torrent.  Not a great solution, but at least it has a wide enough cone.  My preference would be to just widen Nightfall.  Like others have said, it's a fun animation.  Feels powerful.  But really I'd take the first suggestion over what we have now.  It doesn't matter how fun the animation for Nightfall is if the power is bad enough that I end up skipping it.

[Solarverse]

19 minutes ago, carroto said:

I would take any change that allowed me to have a second cone that could actually hit a good number of enemies.  Nightfall as it stands is just too narrow.  I've taken to skipping it and proccing up Torrent.  Not a great solution, but at least it has a wide enough cone.  My preference would be to just widen Nightfall.  Like others have said, it's a fun animation.  Feels powerful.  But really I'd take the first suggestion over what we have now.  It doesn't matter how fun the animation for Nightfall is if the power is bad enough that I end up skipping it.

It's all a matter of perspective really, I skip Torrent in favor of Nightfall, haha.

[Tad Cooper]

 

4 hours ago, Uun said:

I checked in game and those descriptions are still there, however, they definitely changed something so that you can use immobilizes on KD patches. I just tested it with my earth/earth dom. I can use stone prison and stone cages on top of earthquake and they still flop like fishes. Not sure if they could do the same thing with Umbral Torrent/TT.

I'd assume it's the 10000% resistance then. That's way past capped, so they just fall down and get back up again. Like Chumbawumba. Cool, let's do that instead and we can drop the idea of adding knockback bonuses to Aim, even though I thought it was a pretty cool idea to be able to do a one off knock back in a series of knock downs.

 

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

Drop tar patch. Drop pit on it, too. Should anything still work its way out, Torrent pushes them back in. Works quite nicely. Even if you're not dark/dark, it's an effective positioning tool as is right now.

You realize that that would literally not change with what I've described, right? Anything not immob'd by tentacles will get knocked back into the patch by Umbral Torrent and take the damage Night Fall does instantly instead of the whole 10 points at level 50 Torrent does. Neat! Anything that's already immob'd should already be in the tar and will get knocked down instead of back, ruining their next several seconds without losing -res. Also why the hell are you using Dark Pit if you've got Fearsome Stare? It's higher mag, wider area, faster recharge. You'll get the LTs and occasionally the bosses. Dark Pit will never give you either unless you combine it with Howling Twilight.

 

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'll take Nightfall over Aim, thanks. I like Nightfall. The look, the DOT, everything.

I mean, I can't argue with you and Solarverse's aesthetic preference. Mechanically it's inferior. It's animation time is twice as long as Torrent/Umbral Torrent. The same amount of damage (maybe 4 points less) is applied by Umbral Torrent instantly vs the 2.8 seconds of Night Fall. Those two things mean higher DPA for Umbral Torrent, as well as having more options for procs. Aim would give support characters slightly more damage on a set that's fairly weak in that department and make the set more uniform across ATs. In my experience most people wonder why the other sets get it and Dark doesn't.

 

I have to admit that this conversation did not go how I expected. It's frankly amazing to me that y'all are arguing against a straight buff on multiple planes, and not because you think it's overpowered but because you don't want to give up M&Ms for a Reese's cup. Would I have gotten a better reception just asking for Torrent to be made into Umbral Torrent and walking away, rather than trying to appease game balance and mollify people who would suddenly have to deal with knockback? I feel like then I'd hear, "No no. You already have Night Fall. You don't need ANOTHER damaging cone."