Focused Feedback: Earth Manipulation

[Booper]

 

 

Earth Manipulation 

New Secondary Powerset for Blasters

 

You can control the forces of the Earth. You can manipulate earth and stone to defeat your foes. The crushing force of many Earth Powers can reduce a target's Defense, while most Stone attacks will knock foes off their feet.

•   Stone Prison  Ranged, Moderate DoT(Smash), Foe Immobilize, -DEF, -Fly
  • Immobilizes a single target within an earthy formation and deals some Smashing damage over time. Some more resilient foes may require multiple attacks to Immobilize. Stone Prison can also reduce a target's Defense.
•   Heavy Mallet  Melee, High DMG(Smashing), Knockback
  • Your control over the earth allows you to form a mallet of solid stone. This Stone Mallet deals high damage and can knock down weak foes.
•   Salt Crystals  PBAoE, Foe Sleep, -DEF
  • Attempts to encrust all nearby foes in a Pillar of Salt. The victims will remain encased within the salt for quite a while, but will automatically break free if attacked. Affected targets have reduced defense for a while, even if they break free.
  • This power is Auto-Hit. The power still requires a ToHit check to apply its -Defense Debuff.
•   Build Up  Self +DMG, +To Hit
  • Greatly increases the amount of damage you deal for a few seconds, as well as slightly increases your chance to hit.
•   Tremor  PBAoE, Light DMG(Smashing), Knockback
  • You can cause a localized earthquake immediately around you. This will deal moderate damage to every foe in melee range, while knocking them back.
•   Mud Bath  Toggle: PBAoE, -SPD, Self +Heal Over Time, +Recovery
  • While this power is active, you draw upon the geothermal power of the Earth to create a bubbling pool of hot mud around you. All foes in melee range will become snared and entrapped in the mud, slowing them down. You recover a small amount of health every few seconds while this power is active.
•   Beryl Crystals  Toggle: Self Res(Confuse, Perception, ToHit), +Perception, Accuracy
  • Activating this power summons several rare Beryl Crystals to orbit around you. These Crystals can bring clarity of the mind and increase your Accuracy, Perception to see hidden foes, and grant resistance to Confusion and ToHit debuffs.
•   Fracture  Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe Disorient, -DEF
  • You can Fracture the ground around an enemy, disorienting all affected targets for a good while. You must be on the ground to activate this power.
•   Seismic Smash  Melee, Extreme DMG(Smashing), Foe Hold
  • This massive attack hits with all the force of the Earth itself. It deals tremendous amounts of damage and may Hold the target if they are not defeated outright.

[Indystruck]

Beryl Crystals is listed as giving resistance to Confusion and ToHit debuffs, but it has Confuse Protection in combat attributes. Also not seeing +Accuracy in combat attributes when checking.

[ScarySai]

I dislike salt crystals for a blaster powerset. While the changes to sleeps that make it autohit are nice, and while for leveling it could potentially be somewhat useful at times, a sleep power in a powerset that exclusively belongs to the "hit everything in the room to death!" AT just seems to doom the power to being useless past level twelve. At least Fracture won't break from the mob being tagged, and has synergy with seismic.

 

The blaps in this set have some very satisfying cronch to them, though. Big fan of that.

Edited November 6, 2021 by ScarySai

[Kai Moon]

The new blaster versions of Stone Prison and Salt Crystals allow defense debuff enhancements and sets. I think that's the right call.

 

The controller and dominator Earth Control versions of the same powers don't allow debuff slotting, though. That will put the controller/dom version at a disadvantage. In particular, blaster Salt Crystals would be decent at applying Achilles procs, but controller/dominator Salt Crystals (despite its much longer recharge time) would not. I'd suggest backporting debuff enhancements and sets to all of Earth Control, to show the whole set a bit of love.

[InfamousBrad]

Having Salt Crystals and Mud Bath in the same powerset is counter-productive, because Mud Bath makes it impossible to use Salt Crystals. You run in, fire your AoE sleep, it autohits, one second later Mud Bath wakes them. (I ran into the same problem with the Seismic Shockwaves power.)

 

Any chance of making the blaster version of Salt Crystals targeted AoE instead of PBAoE?

[JayboH]

23 minutes ago, InfamousBrad said:

Having Salt Crystals and Mud Bath in the same powerset is counter-productive, because Mud Bath makes it impossible to use Salt Crystals. You run in, fire your AoE sleep, it autohits, one second later Mud Bath wakes them. (I ran into the same problem with the Seismic Shockwaves power.)

 

Any chance of making the blaster version of Salt Crystals targeted AoE instead of PBAoE?

When testing this on Cryptic, I didn't take Salt Crystals, but that's weird that Mud Bath is waking them up.  It isn't doing any damage.  It only slows.  Could you figure out why from the combat log?

[Wavicle]

A question from my small amount of testing thus far:

 

Is Stone Prison for Blasters really supposed to be Mag 4 Immobilize? Seems better than it should be.

[twozerofoxtrot]

Is Mud Bath supposed to add some sort of damage? Cause it does show that it is in the CombatNumbers panel and in the detailed part of the InfoTab but doesn't have any mention of this all in the main power info blurb. 

 

Or am I missing this info from elsewhere in the set?

 

[TheDreadnought]

9 hours ago, InfamousBrad said:

Having Salt Crystals and Mud Bath in the same powerset is counter-productive, because Mud Bath makes it impossible to use Salt Crystals. You run in, fire your AoE sleep, it autohits, one second later Mud Bath wakes them. (I ran into the same problem with the Seismic Shockwaves power.)

 

Any chance of making the blaster version of Salt Crystals targeted AoE instead of PBAoE?

 

Mud Bath isn't breaking Salt Crystals for me. Do you maybe have a proc activating that's doing it?

Edited November 6, 2021 by TheDreadnought
Screenshot added

[LQT]

Tremor isn't accepting ATOs atm despite other damage powers from the set doing so, [Stone Prison, Heavy Mallet, Seismic Smash].

[SuperPlyx]

1 hour ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Is Mud Bath supposed to add some sort of damage? Cause it does show that it is in the CombatNumbers panel and in the detailed part of the InfoTab but doesn't have any mention of this all in the main power info blurb. 

 

 

I'm guessing this:

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, SuperPlyx said:

 

 

I'm guessing this:

Right but what IS that? The text description of the power doesn’t indicate anything about damage buffs.

[Nemu]

Defiance buff. When toggled on it appears to ramp up damage over 5 seconds, up to a max of 26.80% Not sure if that's working as intended. 

 

The other earth mastery powers lack the defiance number in their power info. But they definitely do generate defiance +dmg buffs

[Wavicle]

9 minutes ago, Nemu said:

Defiance buff. When toggled on it appears to ramp up damage over 5 seconds, up to a max of 26.80% Not sure if that's working as intended. 

 

The other earth mastery powers lack the defiance number in their power info. But they definitely do generate defiance +dmg buffs

But that is not how Defiance works. Buffs last only a few seconds.

[Nemu]

You are talking about defiance 2.0. Clearly this is defiance 3.0!

[Kai Moon]

Someone insisted I was wrong so.

 

Blaster version accepts defense debuff SOs, accurate defense debuff sets, and defense debuff sets. Controller version does not.

 

[Wavicle]

Just now, Kai Moon said:

Someone insisted I was wrong so.

 

Blaster version accepts defense debuff SOs, accurate defense debuff sets, and defense debuff sets. Controller version does not.

 

 

What are the actual values of the debuffs?

My understanding was that Controller Earth Control Def Debuffs are unenhanceable specifically so that they can be stronger out of the box. Is this wrong?

[Captain Powerhouse]

11 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

My understanding was that Controller Earth Control Def Debuffs are unenhanceable specifically so that they can be stronger out of the box. Is this wrong?

 

I recall that being the live team stance. Earth Manipulation -defense debuffs are half the strength of the controller ones.

[Kai Moon]

Now that you mention it, yeah, the control versions have double the debuff magnitude (after adjusting for AT modifiers).

 

Questionable design choice, with procs being endgame meta for defense debuff powers. The blaster version does it right imo. Just feels bad knowing my earth controller will have the inferior versions.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Kai Moon said:

Now that you mention it, yeah, the control versions have double the debuff magnitude (after adjusting for AT modifiers).

 

Questionable design choice, with procs being endgame meta for defense debuff powers. The blaster version does it right imo. Just feels bad knowing my earth controller will have the inferior versions.

 

On the other hand, it means the Controller doesn't need to waste slots on those and can spend the slots elsewhere. It also means the Blaster has greater Damage potential with similar powers, which is how it should be IMO.

[ZorkNemesis]

16 hours ago, Wavicle said:

A question from my small amount of testing thus far:

 

Is Stone Prison for Blasters really supposed to be Mag 4 Immobilize? Seems better than it should be.

 

I would bet that this might be the result of copying the power from Earth Control.  Plant Manipulation's Entangle is also Mag 4 for likely a similar reason.

[Wavicle]

So much was made of normalizing the range of Blaster immobs, I’d think doing the same to magnitude makes sense.

[twozerofoxtrot]

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

But that is not how Defiance works. Buffs last only a few seconds.

 

So the numbers in the CombatNumbers panel are constantly in flux, so it's probably that.

My undereducated guess is that Mud Bath is a modified Mud Pots power, and that despite the fact that the damage component was pruned off is still giving off Defiance values... but not sure why because in the screen I shared, I wasn't next to any enemies, IE- there was no reason Defiance should have been building +Dmg even if my guess is correct.

[InfamousBrad]

14 hours ago, TheDreadnought said:

Mud Bath isn't breaking Salt Crystals for me. Do you maybe have a proc activating that's doing it?

 

I had assumed that it was the pulsing -spd that was doing it, but I can't duplicate it. I guess it was only Seismic Shockwaves, and that's getting fixed in the next patch.

[JayboH]

1 hour ago, InfamousBrad said:

 

I had assumed that it was the pulsing -spd that was doing it, but I can't duplicate it. I guess it was only Seismic Shockwaves, and that's getting fixed in the next patch.

Yeah that's a very nice change.  I figured in the other thread it had to be shockwaves.  We needed to know though because Mud Bath definitely would have been a bug.