Beam Rifle: Add guaranteed three-target disintegrate spread to Cutting Beam.

[Sunsette]

As the title says.

 

Beam Rifle is designed in a way similar to 'cleave DPS'¹ in other MMOs; it is a strong set which generally has poor mass AoE by CoX standards. While part of this is simply the set's concept, and it is by no means a weak set, it is clunkier than it needs to be. BR has one of the least intuitive cleave mechanics I've ever seen. The only source of guaranteed spread for BR's primary DoT debuff is Lancer Shot; outside of a multi-AV/EB fight, it is often difficult to get fights that exploit this mechanic well. Situations where there are a handful of tough, slow to take down elite enemies are the exception rather than the norm in City of Heroes. Cutting Beam is a narrow, medium-range cone that is frequently skipped because it is difficult to make good use of, getting a sizable damage increase from having disintegrate already up on targets, but otherwise being unimpressive.

 

In normal content, when you include the guaranteed miss chance and everything else, it is simply quite awkward to Disintegrate a target, Lancer it, then Cutting Beam; there's a high chance the original target will be dead, and then Disintegrate is on a frustrating cooldown that you have to fight against. 

 

 Giving this attack a guaranteed three-target spread would:

 

• Greatly increase the natural 'flow' of the set at low levels. Fewer steps involved at which something can die prematurely, move out of range, or have a shot forced-miss.
• Not dramatically scale up BR's group damage in high content; in any x8 content, BR will still be one of the weaker area damage sets. No guarantees that disintegrate would spread to priority targets, and you'd only be able to spread to (at most) 3 new targets every 3-4 seconds.

 

This should be doable by creating three separate effects attached to Cutting Beam's animation:

1. Base AoE damage, with normal target caps.
2. Disintegrate AoE damage. If we make this change, it might be reasonable to lower the target cap on this boosted damage -- after all, it is a cleave, and in mass damage scenarios, you're rarely going to be spreading that much. This would limit the chance for edge-case exploitation.
3. Spread disintegrate, with a 3 target cap.

 

I might also recommend adding a spread to Sentinel's Refractor Beam, since this makes sense with the flavor of the attack. This would be a significant boost to the power of an already strong AoE, albeit one limited to a weaker AT. 

 

---

¹ The way cleave DPS usually works in other games is that they do comparable sustained ST DPS as a single-target focused character, but lack in one or two of the following: utility, survivability, mass burst AoE DPS, or mass sustain AoE DPS (this being much lower than ST damage on any one target). BR hews closely to this -- it gets mass burst AoE DPS but is weak by CoX standards at mass sustain, especially outside of the Sentinel. I think having weaknesses in the set is a good thing and I don't want to make it significantly better at mass sustain, I want to make it cleave more naturally, which is part of the set's intention. However, by its nature that will improve mass sustain a bit, so I understand caution.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Sunsette

[arcane]

I’d be ok with testing something, but please note “weak on AoE” is actually not a bad thing balance-wise as long as the set is exceptional at single target. Which it is.

[dangeraaron10]

I support it!  Cutting Beam is kind of underwhelming on its own.

[Sunsette]

8 hours ago, arcane said:

I’d be ok with testing something, but please note “weak on AoE” is actually not a bad thing balance-wise as long as the set is exceptional at single target. Which it is.

 

I wholeheartedly agree that part of the set's concept is that it is a superb single-target set! It's why I tried to make the suggestion in a way that keeps to the 'cleave DPS' concept rather than makes Beam Rifle an excellent mass killer. As many sentinels can tell you, target cap restrictions are *very* meaningful in this game!

[Naraka]

10 hours ago, Sunsette said:

...however, situations where there are a handful of tough, slow to take down elite enemies are the exception rather than the norm in City of Heroes.

 

 

That sounds like a more interesting problem to tackle, IMO....but you'd probably find out that, high AoE DPS on a set of elite strong targets is probably not going to ever outpace a focused ST set built to take out one target after another.

 

8 hours ago, arcane said:

I’d be ok with testing something, but please note “weak on AoE” is actually not a bad thing balance-wise as long as the set is exceptional at single target. Which it is.

 

Agreed.

[Sunsette]

52 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

That sounds like a more interesting problem to tackle, IMO....but you'd probably find out that, high AoE DPS on a set of elite strong targets is probably not going to ever outpace a focused ST set built to take out one target after another.

 

 

Agreed.

Making the most of Cleave DPS requires both more complex encounter design than is done in CoX outside of incarnate content and a few other endgame exceptions, and much tighter balancing restrictions on classes. I don't think it's a solvable problem in a way that keeps CoX feeling freeform and creative, unfortunately.

[Naraka]

In which case, I'd prefer sets that have inconveniences or even lackluster capabilities rather than push to enhance powers further because it just opens up more sets to do the same.

 

On the other hand, altering set IOs and procs to better interact with powers would be a somewhat neutral improvement so long as it doesn't push the capabilities of the players when culminated.

 

Also, I don't think providing foes a more stable ability to not be wiped out effortlessly is unsolvable but probably not on topic for this thread.

[Sunsette]

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

In which case, I'd prefer sets that have inconveniences or even lackluster capabilities rather than push to enhance powers further because it just opens up more sets to do the same.

 

On the other hand, altering set IOs and procs to better interact with powers would be a somewhat neutral improvement so long as it doesn't push the capabilities of the players when culminated.

 

Also, I don't think providing foes a more stable ability to not be wiped out effortlessly is unsolvable but probably not on topic for this thread.

 

I don't really think this will be a large boost to the endgame power (where this is a big issue) and I have made some edits to further elaborate on the change up-top. It would be a large QoL improvement at low levels, however. 

[Naraka]

Low levels don't need a QoL either.  Beam is already pretty effective and safe due to its KD and stun abilities.

 

As for spreading Disintegrate, didn't they change Lancer Shot to 100% spread the effect?

[Sunsette]

Uhm. Yes. The topic's mentioned Lancer Shot in every iteration (as well as why that's kind of an awkward solution for the content in CoX).