Combo Mechanics Thread

[Uun]

15 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

 

I'm a bit mixed on Staff. Like, I'll wait for the big AoE to get it's ring, and I'll use it, and then... all the bad guys are still alive. Which is fine, I don't expect it to be a one hit multikill, but, I don't perceive any difference between the buffed and unbuffed version of the power. It certainly doesn't seem to do any more damage... and this is on a Scrapper, so you'd think any extra % damage would be noticable.

 

I'm not saying there's no difference, just that it's hard to see and appreciate. Also, this is down at level 20-something, so maybe with higher damage enhancement, the extra damage really starts to show up.

 

But yeah, I got bored of that character pretty quick unfortunately. Rerolled as a Stalker, and it seems a bit more fun so far.

The PBAoE attack is DoT. The bonus damage for lvl 3 comes as an extra tick at the end. So unless you're counting the ticks, you're not going to notice.

[arcane]

10 hours ago, nihilii said:

I'm only voicing the reason people who dislike combos dislike combos.

You voiced a completely imaginary reason that doesn’t even exist outside of your self-defeating perceptions. Not very useful.

 

You have absolute freedom to ignore combo mechanics, no ifs ands or buts.

Edited February 9, 2022 by arcane

[Bionic_Flea]

9 hours ago, arcane said:

You voiced a completely imaginary reason that doesn’t even exist outside of your self-defeating perceptions. Not very useful.

 

You have absolute freedom to ignore combo mechanics, no ifs ands or buts.

The little rings around powers, whatever colors they may be, make me feel that I should click it.  I do have the freedom to click it or not.  But the ring being there makes me think that the game is telling me I'm doing it wrong if I choose not to click it.   You may think that I am silly for letting little rings give me an emotional response. 

 

It's true.  I am a silly little bug that has spent a large chunk of my life playing an online super-hero game with strangers.  What could be sillier?

[Bopper]

34 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

The little rings around powers, whatever colors they may be, make me feel that I should click it.  I do have the freedom to click it or not.  But the ring being there makes me think that the game is telling me I'm doing it wrong if I choose not to click it.   You may think that I am silly for letting little rings give me an emotional response. 

 

It's true.  I am a silly little bug that has spent a large chunk of my life playing an online super-hero game with strangers.  What could be sillier?

It might be worth looking into making it possible to disable highlight rings. It could be possible via Null the Gull and having every single highlight requirement check to see if Null the Gull option is not set. It would be incredibly tedious to do, and it would mean things like Assassin's Focus, Quick Combat (Snipes) or Arcane Power would no longer highlight (unless they were omitted from the Null the Gull options, of course).

[Bionic_Flea]

I'd be OK with that on a character by character basis, like other Null options.

[Marshal_General]

My main problem with staff, damage and rotations aside, is that for some reason in the middle of a fight I decide to start break dancing.

 

Now if it was supported by being able to turn my ballcap backwards before a fight and then /e popnlock afterwards then I could see myself doing that.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Marshal_General

[Without_Pause]

On 2/8/2022 at 7:38 PM, A Cat said:

Shouldn't the comparison be with Golden Dragonfly/Headsplitter? Soaring Dragon and Disembowel are T8's. I'm guessing Staff will look even worse though with this comparison. 

Mostly because they are all ST attacks which do KU. It helps in comparing them in that they are close in terms of where they are selected. Adding in other powers to compare it to is only going to make it worse.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

My main problem with staff, damage and rotations aside, is that for some reason in the middle of a fight I decide to start break dancing.

 

Now if it was supported by being able to turn my ballcap backwards before a fight and then /e popnlock afterwards then I could see myself doing that.

Yeah the set would definitely make more sense if the PBAoE animation involved setting a boombox on the ground first.

[Without_Pause]

To add, the Resist buff from SS for a Tank is over 13%. Even if you can't stack it, add in getting 20% resist from the Tanker ATO proc, and you can have a Tank having over 33% resist simply for attacking. Let's give the unkillable thing even more ways to be unkillable DPA be damned.

[Bill Z Bubba]

It's long past time for the MotT Resist proc to get nerfed. It's ridiculously, brokenly overpowered.

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It's long past time for the MotT Resist proc to get nerfed. It's ridiculously, brokenly overpowered.

I mean I’m not going to argue with it being brokenly overpowered. But I love it!

[Galaxy Brain]

I suspect there would be heavy resistance to that.

[arcane]

29 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I suspect there would be heavy resistance to that.

But could it be triple stacked?

[Bill Z Bubba]

35 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I suspect there would be heavy resistance to that.

 

6 minutes ago, arcane said:

But could it be triple stacked?

 

If they split the value between defense and resists, they'd be more likely to defend the decision.

[Pzn]

15 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It's long past time for the MotT Resist proc to get nerfed. It's ridiculously, brokenly overpowered.

Only after the claws nerf

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Pzn said:

Only after the claws nerf

 

Claws needs no nerfs or buffs. It's perfectly in the middle of the pack on both ST and AoE output.

 

And since most of my tanks are defense based, nerfing the MotT Res proc will hurt them moreso than the resist based tanks. Hell, by splitting it up the buff into res and def instead of just being a res buff, resist based tanks will actually benefit.

[arcane]

19 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Claws needs no nerfs or buffs. It's perfectly in the middle of the pack on both ST and AoE output.

Well this certainly doesn’t line up with attitudes in the pylon thread, what builds are meta, etc. I’m not saying it needs nerfs but other posts on this forum make “perfectly in the middle” sound like bullshit, sorry.

 

Middle of the pack would make it, what, twelfth-ish? I don’t believe that you believe that. If you do believe that, it’s an anomaly amongst your min-max posting history to love such a powerset so much.

Edited February 11, 2022 by arcane

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 minutes ago, arcane said:

Middle of the pack would make it, what, twelfth-ish? I don’t believe that you believe that. If you do believe that, it’s an anomaly amongst your min-max posting history to love such a powerset so much.

 

You should probably look at my times vs others. Compared to what's being pushed these days, my builds and performance are nothing to write home about. Both pylon times and the trapdoor thread have proven that. I'd say that alone puts my min-maxing credentials in question.

 

I love claws because of its balance point between ST and AoE and its (to me at least) fluid and quick animations. Is it a great set? Yes, of course it is and it's actual ranking probably is higher than the 50% mark but it's no king of the hill on anything while being the 2nd most resisted damage type.

 

That said, due to all the changes it's received over the years, it's a numerically screwed up set and could be corrected just like everything else.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

You should probably look at my times vs others. Compared to what's being pushed these days, my builds and performance are nothing to write home about. Both pylon times and the trapdoor thread have proven that. I'd say that alone puts my min-maxing credentials in question.

 

I love claws because of its balance point between ST and AoE and its (to me at least) fluid and quick animations. Is it a great set? Yes, of course it is and it's actual ranking probably is higher than the 50% mark but it's no king of the hill on anything while being the 2nd most resisted damage type.

 

That said, due to all the changes it's received over the years, it's a numerically screwed up set and could be corrected just like everything else.

Yeah I’m also thinking of some other posters’ reporting here. Like I remember one guy testing several Bio scrappers and finding Claws to be as fast as all the other top tier names except for EM (TW, WM, Katana, Ice...). 
 

I think it’s fine though. I find Claws very tedious, mainly because I was never an attack chain type player until a year ago or less. As in, I mash buttons and usually that means spamming AoE’s and throwing heavy hitters at bosses. Well Claws doesn’t really have heavy hitters, just amazing DPA tiny hitters. Spin is definitely pretty exceptional too.

Edited February 11, 2022 by arcane

[Without_Pause]

4 hours ago, arcane said:

Well this certainly doesn’t line up with attitudes in the pylon thread, what builds are meta, etc. I’m not saying it needs nerfs but other posts on this forum make “perfectly in the middle” sound like bullshit, sorry.

 

Middle of the pack would make it, what, twelfth-ish? I don’t believe that you believe that. If you do believe that, it’s an anomaly amongst your min-max posting history to love such a powerset so much.

Pylon times don't dictate a sets performance in the game outside of that one instance. Try Claws going against the mobs which genuinely resist it. I almost turned down my diff setting doing some missions due to the boredom I was feeling and this was on a Claws Scrapper IOed out and with some Incarnates. Claws is about as close as to perfect in this game that I can think of, but how heavily it is resisted keeps it in check. Claws also isn't as end friendly when it gets resisted as much as it does.

 

Middle of the pack is 11th.

[ABlueThingy]

Ehhhhh I dunno how to formulate my thoughts on this without sounding like I hate everything...

I hate most of the combo mechanics as they exist now. I also hate it when a set has no quirky mechanics to it. I also hate it when a set is overly reliant on a quirky mechanic.

But I love this game so, idk.  Hm.

 

When this game was in Beta there was a "Weapon Master" type set that used Broadsword, Axe, Mace and Katana powers. There was only a few powers for each.  The copied the animations and shared them across all the weapons to make the four sets.  Katana originally used the same animations and later was given it's own unique ones.

I hate that all these sets feel so so close to identical.  Instead of "What does someone who uses a Broadsword do that a Katana wielder doesn't?" or "How are Axe and Mace wielders different in various heroic narratives?"  They are different by only power order, a few numbers here and there, changes on a spreadsheet for dmg/rech/end calculations.  That has always felt gross to me.  The original weapon sets are the worst offenders but a lot of the original blasts have similar issues.  Trying to fill out slots on an alignment chart for stats where your axes are Fast-slow, AoE-ST, Dmg-Special FX.

This kind of design eventually runs into a wall where you've filled out the whole "alignment chart" and any new sets will be redundant.  Where everything is just NRG Blast with some of the numbers swapped around and maybe a ST replaced with an AoE and a new coat of paint. Adding in more quirky mechanics allows you to create more axes to differentiate sets from one another.   I would have frankly been disappointed if Seismic Blast was just a variation of Energy Blast but with KB swapped for more disorients and slows or something and rock effects.

Every Placate and Assassin Strike and BU and Stealth feels like a total waste in Stalker.  Every Aim and BU and Snipe in Blasters.  Every BU and Taunt for Scrappers.  And so on.  If they're so important that the AT needs them then just bake them into the AT.  Give Stalkers Stealth/BU/Placate as an Inherent and do something unique with the space given.  If Scrappers would break without BU such that every set needs one or some variation of one(and most people seem to agree the quirky BU replacements are kinda shit).  Then give all Scrappers BU as an inherent and put some other kind of unique power in there.

In my opinion the control and buff/debuff sets handled this better.  They're still a bit constrained but you more readily see "What can someone who controls Fire do that someone who controls Ice can't" shining through.  Empathy and Force Field are VERY different without relying on weird combo mechanics or anything.

All that said though... the melee/blast sets with additional mechanics felt like they've handled this somewhat poorly? Every melee/Blast set without a mechanic just feels like picking up enough ticks for AoE/ST to make a repeating attack chain to fill my time with.  Most of the powers feel skip-able or that there's an incentive to skip as many as I can without making holes in my chain.  But all the ones with combos and "Must have" powers feel unnecessarily constrained.  DB without a combo system is just Katana with more AoE/DoT and less direct dmg.  Building for the combo just means picking powers specifically for the combo effect which is... idk, it feels off?

Every power I pick up in Darkness Control adds a new kind of thing I can do in combat, a new unique tool to use. Some new problem I can deal with now, a new way to deal with old problems.  I don't get that feeling from Melee/Blast sets.  Every power should be a gain to pick and a loss to skip.  Maybe DB is a good example to look at here? There's multiple combos to pick from.  Maybe if DB had a few more combos to pick from for even more flexibility that would be a good way to look at the design?  If the set had a condensed "minimalist" version with the sharpest most damaging attack chain for people like BillZ that just pick the most brutally effective and simple combo.  But picking up the rest of the set expanded on the tools and there was multiple tool sets inside a given set?


Aargh I don't know what point I'm trying to get at.  I don't like it when a powerset with "must have" powers to pick up, but I don't like when sets have "Must skip" powers.  I don't like it when a power set type is samey but I understand why ATs need to have standardized rules to make it even remotely possible to balance and have a fun experience.  God knows a controller set without a ST Hold available at level 1 would feel like shit to play.
 

[Galaxy Brain]

On 2/12/2022 at 4:33 PM, ABlueThingy said:

Aargh I don't know what point I'm trying to get at.  I don't like it when a powerset with "must have" powers to pick up, but I don't like when sets have "Must skip" powers.  I don't like it when a power set type is samey but I understand why ATs need to have standardized rules to make it even remotely possible to balance and have a fun experience.  God knows a controller set without a ST Hold available at level 1 would feel like shit to play.

 

Big agree here on the "must skips", though often I find myself enjoying "must takes", IE stuff like Disintegrate. 

 

I feel a lot of stuff like taunts, placate, etc, could have been inherent but was a result of the game being old and the design standards put in place. Tbh I would rather more be done with them like how some Build Ups are a bit different. What if say, Psy Melee's taunt/placate interacted with insight? Etc

[Naraka]

10 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

 

Big agree here on the "must skips", though often I find myself enjoying "must takes", IE stuff like Disintegrate. 

 

I feel a lot of stuff like taunts, placate, etc, could have been inherent but was a result of the game being old and the design standards put in place. Tbh I would rather more be done with them like how some Build Ups are a bit different. What if say, Psy Melee's taunt/placate interacted with insight? Etc

 

That could be an interesting prospect to explore. Some other things: What if some of the Taunt powers were, instead, passives that imparted extra taunt + secondary effects with your other attacks? For example: Fire Melee's taunt became Pyre Puissance where if you use an attack, it has a slightly boosted TAoE taunt (maybe more targets) + if a taunted target hit the user, they activate a blast pulse around the user? It's basically a secondary melee-set oriented taunt aura. Only problem with that might be, if it does enough damage, players would feel they're forced to take the "taunt power"...maybe make it just add an additional DoT to all your other attacks instead?

[golstat2003]

I find most combo mechanics to be unfun. So I simply don't play those sets. I ain't here to watch rings around certain powers.

I have a few I've IO'd up just to see what they play like at 50. Annnnnnnd sure enough I no longer play anything that involves combos.

 

Also as stated some of those same sets have ridiculous animations.

[Troo]

Accepting the fact that some folks like combos & some folks do not is a good starting place.

 

I've read the first couple pages and will muscle through the rest.

It seems many valid points have been made regarding why some folks don't like some combo mechanics.

 

Two points:

#1) Myself, and it seems others, dislike a combo mechanic or gimmicks that essentially force players to do something or penalize players for not doing something.

#2) I dislike forcing gimmicks or new combo mechanics on existing power sets that don't have them. (just make a friggin' new powerset)

 

 

I don't begrudge existing combo sets.

I haven't seen folks out there insisting that Dual Blades or Staff get revamped and lose the combos,

but I do see folks saying some set doesn't have a combo, we should add one. Why is that?

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Troo