VEAT suggestions from VEAT community

[KaizenSoze]

I have a dream... that one day the devs will give a through review of VEATs. And in that dream I presented them a cheat sheet of the key issues facing VEATs created by the VEAT community. I wanted the vetern VEATs player to have a place to comment w/o the general scrum of the suggestion forum.

 

Feedback added from:

@arcane @MidnighterClubPatron @mcdoogs

Costume issues by all VEATs:
Weapon re-draw

More Customization

More than one Arachnos costume slot

 

Inherit:

I have learned that it was always just a token power to give all ATs an inherit. Still two suggestions would be to raise it's power to make it useful. Or give a 10-20 buffs to VEATs. This would avoid a lot endurance issues leveling and resolve the endurance expensive claw attack issue.

 

Shared issues faced by Widows/Fortunatas:
Claw attacks endurance costs

  Claw attacks are very expensive for the damage and are the cause of most Widow endurance issues

Claw attacks should be allowed to slot slow pieces. They already do slow and -recharge.

 

Night Widow specific:

Build Up vs Follow up

  Fortunatas can pick both and Night Widows cannot
Psychic scream

  A poor T9, 2.67 cast, 17 end, 30x60 cone, below average proc rate

    Tweak options: Overhaul cast, cone size, damage

    Overhaul: Psychic Wail with double the recharge of the Fort version, or my favorite, low recharge Concealment: Misdirection.
Smoke grenade

  3.75 -toHit, maxed out at 5.94.

  Raise the -toHit. Note, it is already unresistant-able.
Mental Blast

  Weak compared to Poison Dart, 59 vs 72 base damage

  Make damage equal
Eviscerate

  Cone is too shallow or narrow. Note, a lot of non-VEAT ATs skip this power.

  Make wider or deeper. Or fix the T9, so we don't care.

 

Fortunata:
Mental Blast

  Weak compared to Poison Dart, 59 vs 72 base damage

  Make damage equal

Psychic Scream

  A poor attack, 2.67 cast, 14 end, 30x60 cone, below average proc rate

  Widen cone or increase damage or raise recharge for better proc rate
Scramble Thoughts

  3 second cast.

  Lower cast, raise recharge to compensate, or lower cast and make it do more damage

 

Soldiers of Arachnos:
Need feedback, Huntsmen seem to do fine as AOE machines.

Wide Area Web Grenade

  10 radius, would be nice if it was 15

 

Bane:

There is something off about mace attack animations. A sense of wasted time at the beginning and end of attack. Would be great if someone could quantify it.

Banes lack either Fortification or scaling resists. They could use a something to make them more durable like DDR.

For some reason all Bane ranged attacks take 2 seconds to cast. Regardless of damage.

  These three attacks have the same issues. Low damage, knock back tax, poor proc rates
  Mace Beam

    Tweaks: Remove knock back or make it 100% chance.

                 Change damage to toxic/smash, to leverage venom nades -40% toxic resists or add -resist
  Mace Blast and Mace Beam Volley

    Tweaks: Remove knock back or make a high chance, its 30% now

                 Raise damage and recharge

    Overhaul:

                 Turn these two powers into venom nade and frag nade. Lite versions if it is deemed to powerful.
Poisonous Ray

   Lower cast time, extend range it's 40 now, raise recharge to compensate

Web Cocoon

    Lower cast time, extend range. Bring it up to Fortunata Dominate performance.

Crab:

I don't play crabs, need help here.

Crab backpack

  I want other visual options for the crabpack

Omega Maneuver

  Recharge or damage improved.

Pet durability and/or the ability to protect them. Some players do not seem to have this problem. Maybe some quality of life improvements.

Non-crabberminds what are your issues? I know single target damage is an issue.

 

Patron Pools

Leviathan Mastery	Mace Mastery	Mu Mastery	Soul Mastery
Spirit Shark	Mace Blast	Mu Lightning	Gloom
School of Sharks	Web Envelope	Electrifying Fences	Soul Tentacles
Bile Spray	Disruptor Blast	Ball Lightning	Dark Obliteration
Arctic Breath	Shatter Armor	Static Discharge	Darkest Night
Summon Guardian	Summon Blaster	Summon Striker	Summon Widow

 

Leviathan Mastery

Long cast times, nothing faster than 2.3 second, narrow cones nothing wider than 30 deg, nothing is really good

 

Mace Mastery

Knockback tax, long cast times 2 second plus, redraw, one very high damage melee attack

 

Mu Mastery

Decent pool, AOEs proc decently, endurance return is nice, fast cast times

 

Soul Mastery

Gloom makes the pool, Soul Tentacles is poor 25 degree cone, Dark Obliteration is on par with Mu

 

Suggestion review the cast/damage/cone width, Mace should hit harder for all the minuses, Leviathan needs an overhaul.

 

Meta game play (Very Opinionated, slightly crazy ideas):

  To make Night Widows unique, give them a Misdirection like power. Make them the placate mistresses. Raises damages and adds durability. And/Or make them a toHit debuffer.

  Banes should be the toxic stalker/debuffer, add more -resists powers. Leverage venom nades power with more toxic damage.

  Fortunatas are in a good place, just need some minor power tweaks.

 

Other player suggestions, less crazy:

Raise damage cap to 500%. I think this would be a good idea for Night Widows and Banes. Might make Fortunta and Crabs overpowered.

Edited February 2, 2022 by KaizenSoze
Added patron pool

[arcane]

Omega Maneuver needs to have its recharge cut or its damage increased. It’s an extremely cool power but trash by the numbers. Kinda like Photon Seekers in that I’ve taken them sheerly for cool factor but they are basically wasted inefficient slots in my build. Heck you say Psychic Scream is a weak T9 but it’s better than both of those powers.

Edited October 14, 2021 by arcane

[MidnighterClubPatron]

You may be interested in these weekly discussions that were posted about a year ago:

Widow:

Soldier:

Summary from those two discussions as posted by GM Miss:

Widow:

Quote

Overall:

• Making the change over at 22 vs 24 means you could slot SOs with a fresh spec.
• Add no redraw for widow claws
• Add more costume optimization – weapons, outfits, and color options.
• Let people have more than one Arachnos based costume.
• Inherit could use a small tweak to be a little more powerful (perhaps with End Reduc. or an inherit +jump/+run)
• Raise Dmg buff cap to be on par with other combat ATs (500%)
• Adding an Epic/Patron Pool for Veats only

Specific:

• Buttcapes for males!
• Combat Training: Offense tweak to something more useful
• Lower Night Widow Placate animation time
• Let Mind link take +Rech enhancements

Soldier:

Quote

Overall:
⦁    Fix issues with the crab backpack in the costume editor. (Showing for all classes when its not available, when swapping from crab to bane, etc)
⦁    Add no redraw
⦁    The inherit is weak - it could use a boost
⦁    Make their change over at 22 instead of 24 so you dont have to wait to get IOs or change them in two levels. 
⦁    Allow ranged attacks to benefit from Banes hide. 
⦁    Lower Bane ranged animations
⦁    Give crabs aggro management 
⦁    Male buttcapes!
⦁    Added mez protection
⦁    Allow MM pet controls with AS pets.

Specific:
⦁    Omega Maneuver needs more dmg without the delay.

⦁    Make build up not draw the mace

Source to the weekly discussion:
https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14362-discord-weekly-discussion-ongoing-and-updated-thread/

As a Bane main, I share your want for some review, lol.

Edited October 14, 2021 by MidnighterClubPatron

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, MidnighterClubPatron said:

You may be interested in these weekly discussions that were posted about a year ago:

As a Bane main, I share your want for some review, lol.

 Oh. I have read those and many suggestion forums. Started a few myself.

 

 Bane mains, the few, the proud, the very few.

 

 I am very not costume focus. So, thank you for mentioning that thread. I'll add those.

 

 I have learned that the inherit was always meant to be a token buff. Simply to fill the requirement to have an AT inherit.

 

Does not mean we cannot use as a way to solve some end issues.

 

This thread was very information about the inherit and claw end costs.

 

[mcdoogss]

Both Banes and Crabs lack DDR.  It makes more sense for Crabs to have that 'hole' in their defenses given that they are, generally, a ranged-focus branch and have Serum and Fortification for healing and higher resistances.

 

Banes on the other hand, are a melee focused defense-first branch.  They lose the Crab self heal and their resistance armor is significantly worse than Fortification.  A reasonable amount of built-in DDR (say ~20-30%) would go a long way to stiffening up pure Bane survivability without making them overpowered imo.  As it is, Banes are a bit of a melee eggshell.  

 

Both 'pure' NIght Widow and Bane Spider branches should be considered candidates for a mechanism similar to Assassin's Focus.  As it is, the opening critical (unless you waste a power slot on placate) is only a gimmick.  

Edited November 18, 2021 by mcdoogss

[Two Dollar Bill]

Concerning Omega Maneuver, it's not really a problem with damage or recharge, it's the delay while the bomb gathers aggro. Modern teams can kill things so fast that you can literally set the bomb in a group of mobs, watch your team defeat them all in seconds flat, and then see the bomb explode in an empty room. We are well past the point in the metagame where a team would pause and wait for crowd control before each pull, and it's regrettable that the Crab Spider's "ultimate" power is basically useless on a team. Unfortunately the thing that makes it useless is integral to its design and I think it will require a full redesign to make it something worthy of the level 32 slot.

 

Costume-wise, I do have one request that should be simple to fix. Give us the option to remove the Arachnos logo from the Crab Spider backpack.

 

[Senbonbanana]

One thing I would love (and would make me pick my crab back up) is the ability to hide the crab arms when out of combat, or the ability to not use the crab backpack at all.  I *hate* the animation the crab arms do while in flight (and flight is my preferred method of travel).

 

It's already been said, but worth repeating:  Fortunata animation times and damage on many of it's powers is shit. 

[carroto]

Well we're getting one of those items in the upcoming patch: reduced Placate animation time.

 

If I could have one item on the list fixed it would be Bane ranged attack animations.  It's always the same looong animation, even on low-damage attacks.  All of them other than Poisonous Ray have garbage DPA.  So Banes have nothing to really set them apart.  Without the worthless ranged attacks what sets a Bane apart from a Mace Brute or Tanker?  Hide with a 50% bonus damage crit on your first attack?  At least a Mace/SR Brute would have DDR and scaling damage resistances.

 

To me the ranged attacks are one of the main things that could give Banes a unique feel, if only they were worth taking.  Aside from the damage by the numbers being poor, the animation they all share "feels" clunky too.  It seems unnecessarily slow and deliberate, like the Bane has never tried firing from the mace before and is being tentative about it.  Even at level 50 apparently not confident in the process.

 

Next after Banes, same for Fortunatas, but they at least have some decent ones.

[KaizenSoze]

3 hours ago, Senbonbanana said:

One thing I would love (and would make me pick my crab back up) is the ability to hide the crab arms when out of combat, or the ability to not use the crab backpack at all.  I *hate* the animation the crab arms do while in flight (and flight is my preferred method of travel).

 

It's already been said, but worth repeating:  Fortunata animation times and damage on many of it's powers is shit. 

I have seen examples from other non-HC servers where they turn the crabpack into something entirely difference like a set of little drones.

 

I think that would be a good alternative.

 

[KaizenSoze]

21 minutes ago, carroto said:

Well we're getting one of those items in the upcoming patch: reduced Placate animation time.

 

If I could have one item on the list fixed it would be Bane ranged attack animations.  It's always the same looong animation, even on low-damage attacks.  All of them other than Poisonous Ray have garbage DPA.  So Banes have nothing to really set them apart.  Without the worthless ranged attacks what sets a Bane apart from a Mace Brute or Tanker?  Hide with a 50% bonus damage crit on your first attack?  At least a Mace/SR Brute would have DDR and scaling damage resistances.

 

To me the ranged attacks are one of the main things that could give Banes a unique feel, if only they were worth taking.  Aside from the damage by the numbers being poor, the animation they all share "feels" clunky too.  It seems unnecessarily slow and deliberate, like the Bane has never tried firing from the mace before and is being tentative about it.  Even at level 50 apparently not confident in the process.

 

Next after Banes, same for Fortunatas, but they at least have some decent ones.

Yes, the Bane mace animations are slow. Mace in general is slow.

 

It seems like there is rule where no matter the damage/recharge a mace ranged attack must take at least 2 seconds 😞 Web Cocoon would be useful is the animation wasn't so long.

 

IMO. At the moment, the best Bane is a mixed Bane, the combo of surveillance, venom nade, and frag nade can do a lot of -resist and damage. It the one thing that mace Brutes/Tanks/Scrapper cannot do.

 

[carroto]

10 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

IMO. At the moment, the best Bane is a mixed Bane

 

I have a Huntsman for that.  All gun except for Surveillance.  Great AoE.  I was going to go full Bane on the second build but then realized: Why bother?

[Voltak]

On 10/14/2021 at 12:51 PM, KaizenSoze said:

I have a dream... that one day the devs will give a through review of VEATs. And in that dream I presented them a cheat sheet of the key issues facing VEATs created by the VEAT community. I wanted the vetern VEATs player to have a place to comment w/o the general scrum of the suggestion forum.

 

Feedback added from:

@arcane @MidnighterClubPatron @mcdoogs

 

I do want to address this as well 

I created and been playing a Widow since issue 12, the issue they first made their appearance to live servers. 

So many of the above issues , or all of the issues, have existed since their creation. 

It was sad that before they made improvements, Widows saw a nerf. 
The nerf came in issue 14, a totally uncalled for nerf given the state of the game as it is now, even in PVP, which saw SR get a buff but widows got none since issue 14. 

So here is my list --

1.  
A. Reduce endurance cost of widow melee
or 
B. Increase the endurance recovery rate of VEATs; Fortunatas would still need this since a Fortunata running many toggles will need Cardiac or Agless and this is a crutch. 

2. To go with the above, but this is still its own issue --  VEATs very appropriately got Leadership --> Tactics, Maneuvers, Assault, Vengeance...
BUT THIS IS STILL INCOMPLETE 

Give VEATs also Victory Rush, at greater base ( VEATs right get a higher base to their own proper leadership powers) 
or reduced recharge speeds to victory rush.  
Make it so we only require none or just one power from the VEAT leadership pool, not 2, nor 3.  They may need Victory Rush a lot sooner given how melee widows have endurance issues, even Fortunatas may have endurance issues after running so many toggles. 

3. Mental Blast, buff it.  It's ignored 90% of the time -- it sucks. 
4. Telekinetic Blast is not that much better either. Yes, it is better but slightly and still not very good. 

5. Fortunatas and Night Widows either get two forms of AIM or BU , or no one else gets anything other than just ONE.   It's not fair to Fortunatas or Night Widows to have access to just one.   A hybrid widow build can have two:  Follow up and Aim.   A pure Fortunata or pure Night Widow has access to one (widow is prohibited to have two) 
I understand Fortunata can get by this if they dip and go hybrid.  But in reality this is not fair.  So two for all or just one for everyone. 

6. The inherent power for Widows should allow slots, at least one slot. I know it is an auto power, but we do need a slot there so we can place an enhancement. 

Edited November 8, 2021 by Voltak

[kelika2]

Allow random minicrits for melee specs/abilities

tie it to the stealth toggle somehow