VEAT Inherent Change: Dominion of Arachnos

[MidnighterClubPatron]

As shown in the weekly discussion summaries under the Arachnos Widow and Soldier sections, I think its widely agreed that Conditioning, the inherent for Widows and Soldiers is at best underwhelming and at worse, useless.

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

 

 

Quote

Conditioning: Self: Increased Regeneration (0.50%) and Recovery (1.75%)

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Inherent_Powers#Conditioning

 

So a suggestion:

How about we take the proc from the Dominion of Arachnos AT set, and make it the inherent ability for VEATS?

 

Quote

This enhancement adds a chance to reduce your target(s) damage for 10 seconds and terrorize them. This effect will trigger approximately 4 times per minute.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Dominion_of_Arachnos:_Recharge/Chance_for_-Dmg_and_Terrorize

 

Since the proc is able to be slotted into any damage power, I don't think making it global through the inherent will cause any balance issues. Its also thematically appropriate and is a fun and useful proc.

As for what to replace the AT proc with, maybe put in the old conditioning in its place and increase its value?
Drop conditioning entirely and come up with something new?

I don't really have a strong opinion either way.

 

What do you guys think?

 

[Lazarillo]

I feel like the VEAT inherent is fine as is.  It's not "fun", but the ATs are generally strong and effective with the way it works as-is.

Plus, the way things go, changing it to a proc on all attacks would mean VEATs have to constantly deal with "DOMINION!" getting spammed on the screen whenever it went off, and that would get old fast.

[Psyonico]

Although I agree that Conditioning is... Underwhelming... I think that VEATs are in a good place overall so I don't think their inherent needs to change.

[MidnighterClubPatron]

26 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Plus, the way things go, changing it to a proc on all attacks would mean VEATs have to constantly deal with "DOMINION!" getting spammed on the screen whenever it went off, and that would get old fast.

 

It doesn't have to have the word spam. Take for example Controller's Inherent, Containment, which doesn't have any words associated with it. It just occurs.

(EDIT: Maybe it does have words with it? Impact, if thats the word associated with it, it doesn't happen everytime when the effect takes place after just testing it on my controller)

Edited January 21, 2022 by MidnighterClubPatron

[Aurora_Girl]

Why not the toxic damage one widows get? Why do you hate widows?

[MidnighterClubPatron]

1 minute ago, Aurora_Girl said:

Why not the toxic damage one widows get? Why do you hate widows?

 

Both Widows and Soldiers get the same ATOs, so Widows would get access to this too.

The ATOs for VEATS are confusingly put under the catagory of "Soldiers of Arachnos" and doesn't just refer to Arachnos Soldiers, the AT.

[Aurora_Girl]

3 hours ago, MidnighterClubPatron said:

 

Both Widows and Soldiers get the same ATOs, so Widows would get access to this too.

The ATOs for VEATS are confusingly put under the catagory of "Soldiers of Arachnos" and doesn't just refer to Arachnos Soldiers, the AT.

 

I meant application of the SoA fear thing as the inherent rather than the toxic proc. 

 

As a joke. 

 

Because the idea is bad. 

[Bopper]

5 hours ago, MidnighterClubPatron said:

 

 

Quote

Conditioning: Self: Increased Regeneration (0.50%) and Recovery (1.75%)

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Inherent_Powers#Conditioning

Yikes, someone needs to update the wiki. Those numbers aren't close to being correct. 

[Six-Six]

I don't think the Spider's inherent is bad. It may have been made unnoticeable or obsolete by IOs, but you can really tell the difference when playing with just SOs. Also, double stacking leadership will take its toll, even though the Spider Training version costs less end than the tertiary pool version.

If I was to fiddle with the spider inherent, I'd make it like Kheldians and give a +dmg and +fear for every spider present. 

[KaizenSoze]

The VEAT inherit has a weird history as it was supposed to be nothing more than placeholder to appease the player base on live. Every AT should have an inherit the players demanded.

 

For endurance, there are two issues as I see it. The inherit is useless and some VEAT attacks are punitively expensive. In particular some AOEs and claw attacks. Example, Spin is just horrible for endurance, it the most costly Spin in the game.

 

The proc is idea is interesting idea, as long as it didn't effect non notifying powers like confuse or surveillance.

 

I have been keeping this thread in the VEAT forum for suggestions.

 

 

[Novacat]

I do feel conditioning is quite underwhelming; it barely even exists by mid-levels.

There's also the issue that the soldiers suffer from some serious redraw, and the Bane ranged attacks are just trash, plus none of the ranged attacks can even take advantage of the cloak.

 

The Spider's Bite proc is quite weak and tends to end early; what if instead of the terrorize, all attacks had that instead? Feels like it combined with the minor recovery/regen of conditioning would fill things out nicely.

[Sakura Tenshi]

I don’t know about making a proc into an inherent, if nothing else, the chance for mag 2 fear that lasts for a very short duration seems just as, if not more so useless.

 

if I were to suggest a change myself (which I will because I’m like that), I would probably go a significantly more complicated route and turn the VEAT inherent into..

 

Survival of the Fittest: Arachnos’ Darwinist teachings instill nearly sadistic  sense in its best soldiers. Anytime you defeat an enemy you will be healed for a small amount of HP depending on the strength of your Target and recover an amount of endurance. (2.5%hp/5%end-minion, 5%hp/10%end-Lieutent/boss, 20%hp/100%endurance for EBs and stronger)

 

numbers would probably need adjustment but the idea would be to let Arachnos Soldiers continually try to rack up kill after kill. Sort of inspired by the Bounty Hunter and Body Count feats from For Honor.

[Vanden]

13 hours ago, Bopper said:

Yikes, someone needs to update the wiki. Those numbers aren't close to being correct. 

 

 The numbers are accurate, they're what the base Regen and Recovery of the ATs are, thanks to Conditioning.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Vanden

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

 

 The numbers are accurate, they're what the base Regen and Recovery of the ATs are, thanks to Conditioning.

It'll help me to see the math being done that gets to 0.50% regeneration and 1.75% recovery. I know the base regeneration is 20% more than other ATs (0.3 versus 0.25) and the base recovery is 5% more (1.05 vs 1.0), however I don't know what is being done to represent those values as shown in the wiki.

 

Edit: oh I see, they are representing it in terms of HP/End per second. That really needs to be explained better in the wiki.

 

Edit 2: so the math is as follows.

 

For other ATs, your base regeneration is 0.25 (25% HP) per minute. That converts to 0.4167% HP/sec.

 

Their base recovery is 1.0 (100% End) per minute. That converts to 1.67% End/sec.

 

For Arachnos, your base regeneration is 0.30 (30% HP) per minute. That converts to 0.50% HP/sec.

 

Arachnos base recovery is 1.05 (105% End) per minute. That converts to 1.75% End/sec.

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by Bopper

[AgentForest]

While Soldiers/Widows are in a good place, I do feel their inherent passive is just... so boring and underwhelming.  Conditioning always felt like it was a placeholder meant to either get upgraded or replaced, but they somehow forgot.

 

From what I've experienced, AT passives are meant to convey their purpose and facilitate that role.  What's the role of the VEATs?  Well, they're something of a jack-of-all-trades who gains some specialization to be more like some other classes, while still being generally useful at most things.  While Kheldians are a jack-of-all-trades AT as well, they get to specialize on the fly through transformations.  Arachnos ATs are more versatile at all times, but just lean in a direction instead of dramatically shifting roles on a dime.  My suggestion?

Military Efficiency: You gain the small regen/recovery boost when making the character, as you do now, but the move upgrades upon selection of a "subclass."

Soldier:

1. Crab Spider: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost and cooldown of summons, and the endurance cost of the leadership auras.
2. Bane Spider: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost of your damaging melee moves, and your ToHit and Damage leadership auras provide more to you than to allies.

Widow:

1. Night Widow: Like the Bane Spider, you gain endurance cost reduction on damaging melee moves, and further self-buffs from leadership ToHit and Damage auras.
2. Fortunata: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost and cast time crowd control moves, with reduced endurance cost on leadership auras.

This would let you specialize into your subclass and lean into its strengths without really getting rid of their versatile nature.  The leadership buffs you get are amazing, but making the more supportive subclass options more efficient at using them helps.  Crab Spiders may not get access to the crowd control of Fortunata, but they get a lot of summon options, so making them a tad more of a Mastermind could be fun.  My main issue with VEATs is that they are absolute endurance hogs without Incarnate powers.  It pretty much forced my hand with my Crab Spider to pick certain Incarnates, and even then she struggles with endurance, and probably will continue to until I finish upgrading them to max in at least two incarnate categories.  Not just because the pets are so expensive, but because staking all the leadership boosts is draining to begin with.

Perhaps this would require some changes to scaling on some things, who knows, but it would definitely feel more in-line with what the ATs offer.

[SeraphimKensai]

VEATS could probably use a balance pass looking into the end cost of their abilities, as even with Conditioning, they can be pretty end heavy especially pre-IO's.

 

To throw my own take on it, replace Conditioning with a new Inherent called Venomous Fang. Venom is injected into each target causing a scaling toxic damage DoT, and scaling self BoT (buff over time) to Regen/Recovery.

 

The scales  are as follows:

Target HP 100% - minor toxic DoT lasts 2 seconds, 0% BoT.

Target HP 90% - minor toxic DoT lasts 3 seconds, 2% BoT Regen/recovery lasts 3 seconds.

Target HP 75% - minor toxic DoT lasts 5 seconds, 5% BoT Regen/recovery lasts 5 seconds.

Target HP 50% - minor toxic DoT lasts 7 seconds, 7.5% BoT Regen/recovery lasts 7 seconds.

Target HP 25% - moderate toxic DoT lasts 7 seconds, 10% BoT Regen/recovery lasts 10 seconds.

Target HP 10% - moderate toxic DoT lasts 10 seconds, 12% BoT Regen/recovery lasts 10 seconds.

 

Limits, 1 VEAT cants stack multiple DoTs on the same target, but multiple VEATS can stack DoTs on 1 target. Also each VEAT is limited to a maximum of 5 BoT Regen/recovery buffs from Venomous Fang at a given time. (EDIT: Maybe a stack of 5 12% bonuses would be too much as if I'm doing my math right that would be 1.67+((1.67*.12)+(1.67*.12)+(1.67*.12)+(1.67*.12)+(1.67*.12))

So potentially a rate of 2.672 off 5 fully scaled targets. Well maybe that's alright but I'll let you all mull the numbers).

 

The idea behind this is to essentially use how spiders eat, by injecting venom and enzymes in their targets to break down the target into a liquid form for the spider to drink up and nourish itself. I figure this is a bit more thematically fitting than just conditioning and likely overall more useful for VEATS than the current Conditioning.

Edited February 24, 2022 by SeraphimKensai

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

VEATS could probably use a balance pass looking into the end cost of their abilities, as even with Conditioning, they can be pretty end heavy especially pre-IO's.

 

So potentially a rate of 2.672 off 5 fully scaled targets. Well maybe that's alright but I'll let you all mull the numbers).

 

The idea behind this is to essentially use how spiders eat, by injecting venom and enzymes in their targets to break down the target into a liquid form for the spider to drink up and nourish itself. I figure this is a bit more thematically fitting than just conditioning and likely overall more useful for VEATS than the current Conditioning.

Not against the DOT idea as long as it does not effect no notify powers like confuse and aura of confusion.

 

I am still working slowly on a spread sheet to document how expensive Widow claw attacks are compared to other ATs. I have never in my life had as many end issue even with green SOs when I leveled my Night Widow. Even with full IOs and minimal procs, ageless is still required for long fights. Only cardiac can curb the end issues.

[SeraphimKensai]

36 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Not against the DOT idea as long as it does not effect no notify powers like confuse and aura of confusion.

 

I am still working slowly on a spread sheet to document how expensive Widow claw attacks are compared to other ATs. I have never in my life had as many end issue even with green SOs when I leveled my Night Widow. Even with full IOs and minimal procs, ageless is still required for long fights. Only cardiac can curb the end issues.

Yeah I wouldn't want it to break confuse, sleep, or smoke bomb -perception related powers either.

 

But yes the primary abilities end cost between Widows and even SoA are pretty crazy. I leveled up the widow the old fashioned way and I found it was gasping for breath quite a bit where it had to actively choose to slow my attack chain otherwise it would cause me to toggle drop leadership toggles for the team, so I'm just shooting darts like an idiot waiting on End to catch up.

 

My DoT Venomous Fang above would potentially allow the recov to go from 1.75% end/sec to 2.67% end/sec before factoring in set bonuses and outside buffs fully saturated with 5 stacks of buffs with enemies about to die, that said it would require substantial testing to figure out average recovery improvements, but it's designed to give more recovery the weaker your enemies are which assumes you used end to get them there and could use the extra recovery. The DoT makes it so the play style requires being actively fighting to really benefit from it, so that someone isn't benefiting if they are passively running every toggle they can in stealth and just following the DPS.

 

Also I just did the math for a fully saturated Regen under this and it would change the Regen from .5% to .66672% HP/sec. (I used Boppers numbers above for reference).

Edited February 24, 2022 by SeraphimKensai

[Crasical]

On 1/20/2022 at 6:24 PM, MidnighterClubPatron said:

As for what to replace the AT proc with, maybe put in the old conditioning in its place and increase its value?

 

Conditioning is boring but it's a useful bonus; don't strip it out. Especially with SoA's being kind of end heavy in the first place.

[MidnighterClubPatron]

@SeraphimKensai
@Crasical

@KaizenSoze

Regarding the end issues:

If the inherents are always on and it gives a discount to end...why not just reduce end cost of the AT powers themselves? Seems like the inherent would be solving a problem that was placed there just for the inherent to solve. So that seems awfully pointless and unfun.

Of course, it would have additional use in reducing the end cost of power pools/epic power pools but is that what we really want as a defining trait of an AT? Especially compared to Controllers/Tanks/Scrappers?




 

Edited February 24, 2022 by MidnighterClubPatron

[SeraphimKensai]

1 hour ago, MidnighterClubPatron said:

@SeraphimKensai
@Crasical

@KaizenSoze

Regarding the end issues:

If the inherents are always on and it gives a discount to end...why not just reduce end cost of the AT powers themselves? Seems like the inherent would be solving a problem that was placed there just for the inherent to solve. So that seems awfully pointless and unfun.

Of course, it would have additional use in reducing the end cost of power pools/epic power pools but is that what we really want as a defining trait of an AT? Especially compared to Controllers/Tanks/Scrappers?




 

That's part of the reason I worded my idea as I did, so that is does more than just counters the end cost of abilities. It increases Regen, and also adds toxic damage to attacks, which would pair well with the Spider Bite Global Proc, and Degenerative.

[KaizenSoze]

12 hours ago, MidnighterClubPatron said:

Regarding the end issues:

If the inherents are always on and it gives a discount to end...why not just reduce end cost of the AT powers themselves? Seems like the inherent would be solving a problem that was placed there just for the inherent to solve. So that seems awfully pointless and unfun.

*pulls out soapbox* *prepares strongly opinionated post*

  I would be alright if they just improved the inherit, but...

 

  Some of the sub-ATs still need some love. None of them are bad, but Night Widows need a little help. Even more then Banes I think now.

 

  Banes are very good solo and in teams, as long as they take venom and frag nades. It's pretty much all the AOE they need. Pure mace Banes are ok, but struggle solo much more than offensive Night Widows. Banes main issues are re-draw and the mace ranged attacks are very poor.

 

  Night Widows have dog poop for AOE in their base powers and completely dependent on Patron pools for even decent AOE. Also, their single target is only a little better than Fortuanas. Their main benefit to a team is 20+% def and 30+ psi resists, something a Fort does almost as well.  Some people have suggested adding a "Power Mastery" pool, but that would rob Night Widows of decent AOE.

  Night Widow's only advantage over Forts is durability. Look at my Night Tank builds in the VEAT forum. It can complete an 801.2 and the first two missions of a 4x8 ITF in melee. I do have plans to solo the ITF. But the tank build is only useful in very hard content, gives up a lot of damage, taunting is just ok, a scrapper with a damage aura would do as well, but might not survive. The build is a slog to play in normal content, feels like a pure mace bane in terms of speed.

  Night Widows need something to make them on par with Fortunatas. I have ideas that I captured in a suggestion thread in the VEAT forum. At the very least, that dog poop T9 they get needs improvement or replacement and of course the endurance issues due to expensive claw attacks. I am open to suggestions as always.

 

Side note, I don't mention Crabs, because I don't play them. They just don't fit my play style.

 

Also, I have vet 100+ Night Widow, Bane, and 300+ vet Fort. So, I do have a lot of play time and understanding.

 

*puts soapbox away*

 

 

[A.I.D.A.]

The best way to make Conditioning feel more relevant would be to give it slotting so I can put another Performance Shifter in it, just like I do with my Stamina. Maybe then my poor Widow can stop injecting Recovery Serum like some kind of addict, and let her arm finally heal from all the needle-marks 😞

Edited March 1, 2022 by Aida LaCanthe

[Gobbledigook]

Wouldn't just increasing the values of Conditioning work, so it is noticeable?.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

Wouldn't just increasing the values of Conditioning work, so it is noticeable?.

 

As I have written elsewhere; I would prefer that instead of an increase +Recovery, I would rather that Conditioning just be a flat +MaxEnd boost.

 

I'm somewhat bored by my own suggestion, so I think I will instead begin a campaign that Conditioning be upgraded instead to grant a 1% discount on all Inf expenses at vendors.