So, procs...

[Mezmera]

46 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

One thing we should define is:

 

What is a proc build?

 

 

Im not sure there are many people who are literally slamming as many procs as possible in every power possible, but I can see people pushing 2-3 per power. However, I bet 1 per damage power and a dedicated proc-monster wouldn't be out of the question. 

 

I think there's a misunderstanding on the one side of "no don't touch my procs!".  There seems to be an inclination to find fault in anything said by @Naraka and any of those on that side of the fence that can see how out of whack some builds can get not because we haven't played them at least some, but that we do play them and it seems a bit over the top.  

 

The dev team stated their future intent a while back about looking into power creep with procs being one of them.  I know I've stated that I do hope they come to a happy medium for everyone involved because 2-3 procs in a power I can see as okay skewing towards exploitive but done right is fine.  I do hope they do this with a scalpel hybrid approach where they review the various procs but also some of these powers themselves seeing how night and day an underpowered long recharging aoe power can be when slotted as a proc bomb.  

 

But yes typically you're slamming one or two powers with procs and then building bonuses around them to maximize their effect.  

[Mezmera]

3 hours ago, BlackHearted said:

 

My point is that people should be realistic about math. Being over the soft cap is superfluous for a squishy AT, and that's what's gonna end up happening in a team setting if there's any buffs at all being applied to an already softcap'd build. 

I don't personally have any strong feelings one way or the other about other people choosing to make sub optimal builds.  

 

Tell you what.  Let's duo some content.  I'll bring my best character I've got which is Mind/Energy dom and you can bring whatever character you think will be best for you, we can fight some +4/8 carnies, arachnos and incarnate missions or whatever you like.  I'll even refrain from using my aoe control until you go down.  Then you can tell me how my dom would be a worse asset to a team than someone that needs to be looked after?

 

What @Monos King had to say is right on point, even though he seems to be more on your side at the moment, I don't think he realizes though we have cookies over here.  Building the best character you can be is the goal so you have much more adaptability.  

[BlackHearted]

1 minute ago, Mezmera said:

 

Tell you what.  Let's duo some content.  I'll bring my best character I've got which is Mind/Energy dom and you can bring whatever character you think will be best for you, we can fight some +4/8 carnies, arachnos and incarnate missions or whatever you like.  I'll even refrain from using my aoe control until you go down.  Then you can tell me how my dom would be a worse asset to a team than someone that needs to be looked after?

 

What @Monos King had to say is right on point, even though he seems to be more on your side at the moment, I don't think he realizes though we have cookies over here.  Building the best character you can be is the goal so you have much more adaptability.  

Sure thing.  Happy to demonstrate.

For the record, a character that is optimized for team play doesn't inherently need "looked after" If someone knows how to use WASD & F1-F5 that alone will be enough to mitigate 90% of the dmg in pve.  Self soft caping is a crutch which people have become entirely to dependent on imho.

[Mezmera]

2 minutes ago, BlackHearted said:

Sure thing.  Happy to demonstrate.

For the record, a character that is optimized for team play doesn't inherently need "looked after" If someone knows how to use WASD & F1-F5 that alone will be enough to mitigate 90% of the dmg in pve.  Self soft caping is a crutch which people have become entirely to dependent on imho.

 

Excelsior; Letifera is the name, we can schedule a play date this weekend if you like.  

[Super Atom]

12 minutes ago, BlackHearted said:

WASD & F1-F5 that alone will be enough to mitigate 90% of the dmg in pve.  Self soft caping is a crutch which people have become entirely to dependent on imho.

 

So you traded self-sustainability for needing to rebuy inspirations constantly and renewing temp buffs? I feel like needing to rebuy and spam inspirations is a far bigger crutch than just soft capping your def especially since it's not even your characters strength it's just spamming insps lol

 

Also, if i have cap'd def i can just bring all reds and do the same thing (damage cap is damage cap) but better because i only need reds.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Super Atom

[ScarySai]

Regen is the best set in the game if you pop four purples and ten oranges before every fight.

 

Unfortunately, that's useless information from a balance perspective.

 

 

 

[BlackHearted]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Im not sure there are many people who are literally slamming as many procs as possible in every power possible, but I can see people pushing 2-3 per power. However, I bet 1 per damage power and a dedicated proc-monster wouldn't be out of the question. 

That seems accurate, outside of pvp and speed runs most people tend to avoid going all out on dmg proc'n in favor of getting as many set bonuses as is possible from what observed.

[BlackHearted]

2 hours ago, Super Atom said:

 

So you traded self-sustainability for needing to rebuy inspirations constantly and renewing temp buffs? I feel like needing to rebuy and spam inspirations is a far bigger crutch than just soft capping your def especially since it's not even your characters strength it's just spamming insps lol

For regular content just poping the ones that drop as you kill things is typically more than enough to make a giant impact on the survivability of a character...  So in effect what i've done is focused on things that can't be easily attained otherwise.. like hit points and dmg for example.... and taken care of defense stats elsewhere sense staying alive is overtly simplistic... This allows me to do more dmg b/c i can focus my power's slotting on an optimal damage dealing rotation.

I want to be clear that this is just one way to build... it's not for everyone as it's more click intensive and i get that (even i don't build every toon this way)..... but you will clear maps more proficiently setting up this way as is evident from the speed running community and be better positioned to take full advantage of external buffs from other players. So yes, like most things with builds its a trade off, but i'm trading superfluous defense numbers for quicker kill rates...  it's not really a big deal to swing by a p2w vendor and grab amps before starting a task.

To address your edit: The slotting of procs allows a build to do more dmg than is otherwise possible while at dmg cap, so no, you can't do just as much dmg on a def soft cap build.... This is why speed runners do not build for def cap, even on builds for solo runs.

Edited July 7, 2021 by BlackHearted
Clarification

[oedipus_tex]

I don't envy the person who has to think about how to fix this.

 

Hopefully we can all agree though that this should not be a thing coming from a Controller APP power:

 

 

 

That's a DPA of 353 before adding extra damage from Fulcrum Shift or the like. 

[wjrasmussen]

On 7/4/2021 at 8:57 AM, th0ughtGun said:

False. Read my comment above on what problems they DO cause. There needs to be a happy medium. I am not calling for a massive nerf, just some balance. As are many others here.

Problems in your opinion.

[oedipus_tex]

On 7/2/2021 at 10:43 AM, th0ughtGun said:

I have a fire/psi dom and even I agree Bonfire is a bit OP in its current state. There is almost no reason for me to cast any other ability, just let them all burn and flop around in the bonfire, and it is up for every group. 

 

 

Want to hear something even more discouraging? Bonfire is actually available in a Blaster APP. In that APP it has the same recharge to duration ratio as Ice Slick and Earthquake on Controllers and Dominators. After realizing I could get Blaster level sustain and damage along with a quake I sunsetted my Fire Doms. I do miss Flashfire a little but there are Blaster AoE Stuns too.

[Marbing]

32 minutes ago, wjrasmussen said:

Problems in your opinion.

In your opinion. 😉

[Lockpick]

Procs are fine.  IMO the devs should stop trying to "balance" the game and should focus on adding new features and content. 

[Marbing]

19 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Procs are fine.  IMO the devs should stop trying to "balance" the game and should focus on adding new features and content. 

If adding harder content is on the table I am all for it! Especially if it’s content that isn’t just HP bags but more difficult mechanisms that take a knowledgeable team to pull off.

[America's Angel]

8 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

One thing we should define is:

 

What is a proc build?

 

 

Im not sure there are many people who are literally slamming as many procs as possible in every power possible, but I can see people pushing 2-3 per power. However, I bet 1 per damage power and a dedicated proc-monster wouldn't be out of the question. 

 

We can probably classify IO builds in three ways:

1. No damage procs. No -res procs. Softcap defense.
2. -Res procs. Damage Procs in a few powers. Softcap defense.
3. Proc Monsters

Hypothesis A: 

#1 and #2 will likely have no significant difference in their cleartimes. (And if they DO, it would identify a power is broken. Such as Burn/Ground Zero/etc.) Keyword here is "significant".

 

Hypothesis B:

#3 would likely have a much faster cleartime, but will be balanced due to having worse mitigation.

 

The steps I'd take to test this:

 

Step 1: Create a softcapped, ~150 recharge, procless, Rad Blast blaster that doesn't use the fire secondary. (Devices, maybe?) Run it through a +4/8 mission a few times to get the cleartime.

Step 2: Switch the slotting in power A from set bonus IOs to 6 procs. Run the mission again a few times. Record the cleartime.

Step 3: Switch the slotting in Power A back to the set bonus IOs, and then change the slotting in Power B to 6-slotted with IOs. Run the mission again a bunch of times.

Steps4-11: Do step 3 but for every power in the primary.

Steps 12-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out TWO powers from the primary.

Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out THREE powers from the primary.

Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out FOUR powers from the primary.

Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out FIVE powers from the primary.

...etc...

Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out all the SINGLE-TARGET powers from the primary.

Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out all the the AOE powers from the primary.

Step ??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out powers in the primary only where is optimal (Long recharge), and building for set bonuses where is optimal (quick recharge powers). Aka a "proc monster".

 

As Rad blast is extremely proccable, and can take all 3 -res procs, it's ideally suited to test out the impact of procs on cleartime. We could then repeat this process with a blast set that doesn't take procs well (such as fire or archery) to compare.

 

The reason we'd use blasters (probably /dev blasters) is because they're pure DPS, so are likely the best baseline to showcase the impact procs have on both increasing DPS, whilst also increasing survival time via reducing incoming DPS. (Also, due to having no mitigation in their secondary other than their sustain powers, they would be the best AT to show the drop in survival as we remove set bonuses and start adding procs.)

 

If we were to do the above on a melee character, or a debuffer, the issue we'd run into is armour sets/debuff sets intersecting with procs differently.

 

I'd also make sure not to use incarnates or inspirations as they would skew the mitigation-lost-via-slotting-procs metric.

 

Done right, this should show us how:

-Damage procs balance in ST attacks

-Damage procs balance in AoE attacks

-Slotting for damage procs balances vs slotting for set bonuses

 

Not a perfect test by any stretch of the imagination. But a good enough place to start.

Edited July 7, 2021 by America's Angel

[skoryy]

48 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Procs are fine.  IMO the devs should stop trying to "balance" the game and should focus on adding new features and content. 

 

Por que no los dos?

 

*gestures a couple pages back to myself and Galaxy Brain*

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

I don't envy the person who has to think about how to fix this.

 

Hopefully we can all agree though that this should not be a thing coming from a Controller APP power:

 

 

 

That's a DPA of 353 before adding extra damage from Fulcrum Shift or the like. 

 

The question is not 'is this OP', the question is 'how do you get players to use a hold as a hold instead of a damage bomb.'

[Bionic_Flea]

9 hours ago, BlackHearted said:

If ppl don't see the error in the logic then i suppose there's no point in me discussing it further.

I finally agree with you!

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, America's Angel said:

I'd also make sure not to use incarnates or inspirations as they would skew the mitigation-lost-via-slotting-procs metric.

To quote Skoryy: Why not both?

 

Sure, run them as you say, but also run them with inspirations and temp powers and all the other things you and others would use for "optimal" damage and survivability?

 

 

[America's Angel]

11 hours ago, BlackHearted said:

Really amusing to see ppl claim doing less dmg than is possible is optimal. Y'all should check out dictionary.com sometime. 

If ppl don't see the error in the logic then i suppose there's no point in me discussing it further.

 

Yeah, I used to believe sofcapping was optimal until I realised I can buy a 50% def inspiration.

 

The game allows me to carry around 20 little potions that make me unkillable for a minute, and to email myself as many of these potions as I need to, and to store them on the market so I can quickly pick them up in between missions if I need to. The existence of something like this makes slotting for the softcap completely pointless IMO.

 

In more casual play I don't even really need the T4s. When soloing, the speed at which I kill stuff means I can just enter with an empty inps tray, and then just hit F1-F5 and be at the softcap just from drops. And when teaming? I'm fine as long as someone else takes the alpha. (Most PUGs tend to have an over-abundance of melee characters that can do this IME.)

 

I used to softcap religiously, but now I don't see much point to it.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

To quote Skoryy: Why not both?

 

Sure, run them as you say, but also run them with inspirations and temp powers and all the other things you and others would use for "optimal" damage and survivability?

 

Yeah I was thinking we could do a few runs with incarnates [and/or] insps in a follow-up test to help compare. But if we used them on the first test, on all of the runs, they would diminish the impact procs have on dps an lowering player mitigation.

 

For example, if we were to use barrier, that's a permanent 5% extra defense. That's the equivalent of six-slotting thunderstrike. (I.e. it frees us up to procc out a power with no downside.) Or if we used a T4 purple inspiration, that's the equivalent of a softcapped build. (I.e. All the procs! No downside!)

 

Best to keep egregious stuff away from the first round of testing so that we can establish a baseline. But yeah including it in latter testing is definitely something I'd want to explore. I imagine what we'd end up seeing, outside of a few problem powers like Burn, is damage procs only outpacing regular IO builds in a significant way when paired with inspirations. But we'd need to test that out and see if it holds true.

Edited July 7, 2021 by America's Angel

[arcane]

10 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

One thing we should define is:

 

What is a proc build?

 

 

Im not sure there are many people who are literally slamming as many procs as possible in every power possible, but I can see people pushing 2-3 per power. However, I bet 1 per damage power and a dedicated proc-monster wouldn't be out of the question. 

My heavy duty proc monsters will typically take Vigor so that they can justify using 5-6 procs per attack. Maybe use one or two damage sets just to shore up extra recharge but that’s it. Using 1-2 per attack isn’t really a proc build, that’s good practice on a regular build.

[ScarySai]

3 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Hopefully we can all agree though that this should not be a thing coming from a Controller APP power:

 

I don't agree, honestly.

 

Procs don't contain, and I'm of the opinion that controllers don't hit hard enough - hence why so many of them use vast amounts of procs.

 

Seismic being a melee attack that belongs to a single epic pool you can opt into seems fine to me. If proc damage is somehow taken care of, base damage should go up across the board for all control sets - especially gravity.

Edited July 7, 2021 by ScarySai

[Lockpick]

2 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

Por que no los dos?

 

*gestures a couple pages back to myself and Galaxy Brain*

 

I didn't read the entire thread, so not sure what your point is.

 

My take is simple.

 

• I don't see procs as being OP
• Characters that use procs may increase their damage, but lose other forms of mitigation from not having set bonuses
• Using procs gives more build choices and more choices are better than less choices
• I don't believe balancing procs should be a priority when compared to providing new content or functionality
• Balancing seems to work sometimes (TW) and not others (Tanks) and there will always be some ATs / Powers that are better than others and balancing just shifts the stack rank, so doesn't provide as much value as providing new shinies

Just providing my opinion...

 

[Doomrider]

45 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

 

I don't agree, honestly.

 

Procs don't contain, and I'm of the opinion that controllers don't hit hard enough - hence why so many of them use vast amounts of procs.

 

Seismic being a melee attack that belongs to a single epic pool you can opt into seems fine to me. If proc damage is somehow taken care of, base damage should go up across the board for all control sets - especially gravity.

Problem is damage output across the board is kind of insane right now particularly with the ease of access to IO builds to push it further and we want to take the means for Controllers to do any meaningful damage away (ie. fixing procs)?

Fast moving, high damage teams (which are in abundance) already make Control sets a bit redundant. Procs right now, at least for lower damage AT's kind of a feel like a bandaid solution to a larger problem, but it at least allows them to participate without feeling wholly redundant once IO builds come online. /shrug

Edited July 7, 2021 by Doomrider

[Galaxy Brain]

Mentioning things that *need* procs to succeed sounds like a por que no los dos if I've ever heard it 😉