issue 27 Focused Feedback: Sonic Attack Revamp

[arcane]

Oh well guys. If it’s that bad let’s leave the Defender set unchanged. I’ll play my Sonic Blaster but keep the /Sonic Defender on a dusty shelf because its damage is completely horrible. Shrug. IMO there are easier ways to kill AV’s than demanding that a ranged damage set stay a bad damage debuff set instead,  but what do I know 🙂 

Edited July 14, 2022 by arcane

[Arcadio]

29 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

Fire used to be top dog for damage, because that is all it did. The new electricity can give fire a run for its money if not pull fire's shorts up over its head and take its money while still doing more than just damage.

 

Sonic had good support and bottom of the barrel damage. I loved getting a sonic on the team for a SBB. I knew the AVs were going to melt.

 

Now the damage has gone up and the support has gone down. My question is wether or not the new damage justifies the decrease of the support or did they just move the damage to middle of the road and the support too far towards the bottom of the barrel and all we have done is exchange problems?

But what blast offers comparable support on live? I don't think there's a blast who's support competes with this beta sonic either. You have to agree that a secondary that offers unparalleled support on a support class is a little over-centralizing at least.

 

And to be clear I do think secondary effects like -def, -tohit, and even -rech can be very valuable effects situationally. But -res is unsituationally strong.

[Galaxy Brain]

Has anyone compared a solo Pylon/AV takedown with a /Sonic build between live and beta? I am curious if the increased DPS of the set itself washes out the difference in debuff strength.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Gorgar said:

Sometimes the team barely has enough damage to take down the AV.

Sometimes...  but not very often.

[Carnifax]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Oh well guys. If it’s that bad let’s leave the Defender set unchanged. I’ll play my Sonic Blaster but keep the /Sonic Defender on a dusty shelf because its damage is completely horrible. Shrug. IMO there are easier ways to kill AV’s than demanding that a ranged damage set stay a bad damage debuff set instead,  but what do I know 🙂 

No doom from me, just think it needs some tweaks. 

 

Personally I think the Res numbers need a little tweak (switch the 8/12). 

 

For me now after respeccing a Sonic defender and running them through a few missions it's the Power Placement that sucks for Defenders (with the Tier 2 power sharing all of its debuff with the Tier 1, making taking both unattractive) and Screech and Sirens both coming in so late. 

[aethereal]

I do think that making T1/T2 not share a buff is worthwhile.  Powerhouse stated something like "people felt like then they needed to get every power."  Well, I mean, that's their neurosis, man.  We don't have to cater to them any more than we have to cater to the people who want all debuff, no damage at all.  For everyone else, their early leveling experience is better.

[kingsmidgens]

Okay just ran tests with an existing Sonic character.  Some caveats:
Character is built for stacking -RES before beta, but not fully optimized.  Characters I had on Live would have been MUCH better at dropping Resistance.  I was going to respec the character but since a nerf is coming I probably won't bother.

Each attack I don't have on beta would only be an additional -6.4% effective resistance (given the 20% resistance already on the pylon)
Current performance:

Note: This could get quite a bit higher.

Beta performance:

Note: This can't get much higher.  Cap would be -15.2%


Couldn't find a mob that I could treat as a punching bag without the pesky -20% getting in the way, by the time you're doing double damage to something even "bad" damage is pretty good.

My conclusion:  You're severely nerfing the debuff potential of the set just to give it damage that's still mediocre.

This is coming from somebody who's played and enjoyed the set many times since the early days.

Buff, don't nerf.  I'm not a fan of anything that requires me to respec my character because what my powers can do has been reduced - add to the set if that'll make people happy but don't remove anything from it.  Personally I am happy to play it as a debuffer because in a group you're going to have DPS characters who can mow down spawns on their own and what slows you down are the EB/AV class enemies, where you currently shine and raise everyone to a higher level.

Sure, you technically still debuff, but it's a pale comparison to what you could achieve before.

[brattycommissar2]

1 hour ago, kingsmidgens said:

Okay just ran tests with an existing Sonic character.  Some caveats:
Character is built for stacking -RES before beta, but not fully optimized.  Characters I had on Live would have been MUCH better at dropping Resistance.  I was going to respec the character but since a nerf is coming I probably won't bother.

Each attack I don't have on beta would only be an additional -6.4% effective resistance (given the 20% resistance already on the pylon)
Current performance:

Note: This could get quite a bit higher.

Beta performance:

Note: This can't get much higher.  Cap would be -15.2%


Couldn't find a mob that I could treat as a punching bag without the pesky -20% getting in the way, by the time you're doing double damage to something even "bad" damage is pretty good.

My conclusion:  You're severely nerfing the debuff potential of the set just to give it damage that's still mediocre.

This is coming from somebody who's played and enjoyed the set many times since the early days.

Buff, don't nerf.  I'm not a fan of anything that requires me to respec my character because what my powers can do has been reduced - add to the set if that'll make people happy but don't remove anything from it.  Personally I am happy to play it as a debuffer because in a group you're going to have DPS characters who can mow down spawns on their own and what slows you down are the EB/AV class enemies, where you currently shine and raise everyone to a higher level.

Sure, you technically still debuff, but it's a pale comparison to what you could achieve before.

genuinely thank you for getting this data for everyone to see just so they can fully grasp just how big the nerf is

[TygerDarkstorm]

3 hours ago, Gorgar said:

Sometimes the team barely has enough damage to take down the AV.  My dark/sonic has proven helpful in those cases.  I for one am not at all excited about nerfing my niche.  I agree sonic needs help for damage ATs but would prefer this not come at my main’s expense.

 

 

You do know that sometimes being this dedicated to being so support only oriented can actually be detrimental, right? Just because you bring decent debuffs to a team doesn't also mean that you aren't being something of dead weight because your attacks do so little damage. These changes allow for you to still bring the -res in support you desire, while also helping the team kill shit faster because you can hit harder than a wet noodle.

 

Have you actually tried these changes on beta yet? A lot of these complaints seem to come from people who haven't actually tried this out for themselves. And not all of us who play defenders want to be relegated into feeling forced to play /sonic because it's the best support blast set. I have a whole primary dedicated to support, my secondary, which is a *blast* set, should not be considered more important than that (or more supportive than my primary); and being able to blast harder means I am still supporting my team's goal of kill the things before they kill us (while still helping them kill the things harder as well).

 

Nature/Sonic might actually be a fun combo now though since I believe Nature has one or two powers that also do -res to enemies.

 

I do agree with the concerns people have over the T1 and T2 and potentially the order of being able to take powers on a defender while leveling. But overall, these changes to Sonic Blast feel like a buff across the board, not a nerf. I look forward to playing with it more on beta.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, kingsmidgens said:

Okay just ran tests with an existing Sonic character.  Some caveats:
Character is built for stacking -RES before beta, but not fully optimized.  Characters I had on Live would have been MUCH better at dropping Resistance.  I was going to respec the character but since a nerf is coming I probably won't bother.

Each attack I don't have on beta would only be an additional -6.4% effective resistance (given the 20% resistance already on the pylon)
Current performance:

Note: This could get quite a bit higher.

Beta performance:

Note: This can't get much higher.  Cap would be -15.2%


Couldn't find a mob that I could treat as a punching bag without the pesky -20% getting in the way, by the time you're doing double damage to something even "bad" damage is pretty good.

My conclusion:  You're severely nerfing the debuff potential of the set just to give it damage that's still mediocre.

This is coming from somebody who's played and enjoyed the set many times since the early days.

Buff, don't nerf.  I'm not a fan of anything that requires me to respec my character because what my powers can do has been reduced - add to the set if that'll make people happy but don't remove anything from it.  Personally I am happy to play it as a debuffer because in a group you're going to have DPS characters who can mow down spawns on their own and what slows you down are the EB/AV class enemies, where you currently shine and raise everyone to a higher level.

Sure, you technically still debuff, but it's a pale comparison to what you could achieve before.

I don't understand... where are the pylon kill times between live vs test. Those are needed. The debuff numbers are meaningless to show us if you aren't going to try to represent the DPS situation as a whole.

Edited July 14, 2022 by arcane

[csr]

This is in response to kingsmidgens' post:

 

The cap would actually be -21.6%, as you're missing both the 'Extended' and 'Extensive' debuffs from your second set of numbers.  Since Dreadful's debuff can't be kept up more than about 50% of the time, let's call that 18.4%.  But we also have to yank 8% off the previous set for the same reason.

 

That's taking damage from 80% to 118.4% or a 48% increase in damage.  The previous test takes you from 80% to 168%, or a 110% increase in damage (EDIT:  In reality you can't do that.  It caps out about 92-97% re Bopper's calculations and 92% in my tests due to missing, ArcanaTime, etc).  That's for the entire team against a single target.  62% of a team's or league's damage is almost certainly going to swamp the increase in DPS for the set.  So there's no way the buff to the set's DPS is going to match that against a single hard target with teammates also hitting that target.  That's a corner case - one target, many attackers.  It's a small part of the game's overall content, but looms large in the minds of many because it is almost always present at some point in end game content and is often the key encounter for success in those situations.

 

Because I have lots of logs I parsed them and compared actual results with the estimated result using the new set.  In this theoretical construct the new set clearly performed better for all ATs solo (yes, even Defenders).  It was about break-even on other teams where there was no AV or GM.  It performed perhaps bit worse with a single AV such as Maria Jenkins arc missions.  However, that may be due to too many of my logs for those missions being on full 8 person teams; I generally don't solo AVs or GMs (though my Cold/Sonic Def can do that, it's just too much work).  The new set performed much worse in AV heavy environments such as the Summer Blockbuster.  My iTrial and Hami logs have leagues that are too variable in size and composition to be good for any sort of theoretical comparison - there's just no way to claim 'all other things being equal' (ceteris paribus).  I can compare individual iTrials and get a sense how that iTrial might have changed, but I just can't generalize from that (btw, it turns out very little of the time spent in a UG trial - for example - is spent on the big AVs fights).

 

Yes, the set is no longer as good an AV/GM melter, but it's still about as good at producing -Res on a single target as true support sets.  And as a Blast set (which is what it is supposed to be), it seems much better designed to me.

Edited July 15, 2022 by csr

[Eldyem]

I'm actually fine with this nerf for Defenders, as I do I feel this set was massively overperforming within its niche of AV melting within groups. I know nerfs are unpopular but there just really isn't another blast set with debuffs as good as this, nor do I think its physically possible to put sets like Fire Blast or Archery on Defenders on par without a complete re-imagining of the sets, so I'm fine with it.

 

But the T1 and T2 sharing a debuff feels very bad on three out of the four ATs who get this set, and it doesn't feel good on the one that doesn't care as much.

[Biosphere]

2 hours ago, kingsmidgens said:

Personally I am happy to play it as a debuffer because in a group you're going to have DPS characters who can mow down spawns on their own and what slows you down are the EB/AV class enemies, where you currently shine and raise everyone to a higher level.

 

This is the single most important concept that has been said in this entire thread to justify a more strategic design of not only Sonic Blast, but all powersets, across archetypes.

[Gorgar]

2 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

You do know that sometimes being this dedicated to being so support only oriented can actually be detrimental, right? Just because you bring decent debuffs to a team doesn't also mean that you aren't being something of dead weight because your attacks do so little damage. These changes allow for you to still bring the -res in support you desire, while also helping the team kill shit faster because you can hit harder than a wet noodle.

 

Have you actually tried these changes on beta yet? A lot of these complaints seem to come from people who haven't actually tried this out for themselves. And not all of us who play defenders want to be relegated into feeling forced to play /sonic because it's the best support blast set.

Yes, I’ve been playing since about Issue 4, have a few pages of 50s, and tend to alt to what the team needs.  The dark/sonic is a lot of fun to play if there’s little support, and tends to wander off if she is not needed, often to be replaced by a fire blaster or a brute.

 

I have tried the changes, and while it is nice that some attacks are faster, I was not able to find a big team taking on an AV.  Yes, solo damage is better.  
 

For what it’s worth, I have several defender 50s, and only two are /sonic.

 

tl;dr: I do know how to play, don’t always pick the optimal powerset, and have my own, hopefully valid, priorities, which the weird new shriek/scream conflict interfere with.

[WindDemon21]

6 hours ago, aethereal said:

Howl giving -20% res to 10 targets at the start of each spawn seems like...  not the biggest deal in the world, but a notable advantage.  But new Sonic Blast still has it.

Not on sentinels though with the dumb target cap change, who will only hit 6 with the -resistance and damage... While on the subject of the cones though, can we please equalize sirens song to the 50ft range like the other cones, that has always been a really funky part about the aoe on sonic too.

 

6 hours ago, Gorgar said:

Sometimes the team barely has enough damage to take down the AV.  My dark/sonic has proven helpful in those cases.  I for one am not at all excited about nerfing my niche.  I agree sonic needs help for damage ATs but would prefer this not come at my main’s expense.

Which is where on defenders and corruptors at least I think there should be slightly different tweaks to keep this in place. And with screech being a major part of the damage cycle now, should be sooner, i'd personally prefer aim at 35 on defenders where it is less necessary. (like explosive blast on energy blast too, main powers feel horrid to have to wait till 35 for, nukes make enough sense at 38 but by 28 the core of sets should be reachable)

 

They also 100% need to give an extra effect for scream so there is actual value to picking up both the tier 1 and 2, especially in the defenders case who can't choose scream over shriek. Likewise having shriek's damage properly upgraded to the 62.56 damage at 50 scalar for blasters for it's 1s cast time. Going to re-iterate as well, that screech could very easily be made the set's snipe as well if that was a consideration.

[Carnifax]

8 hours ago, arcane said:

I don't understand... where are the pylon kill times between live vs test. Those are needed. The debuff numbers are meaningless to show us if you aren't going to try to represent the DPS situation as a whole.

Not sure solo killing time is that useful a metric for a Support set to be honest. Soloing pylons isn't something I'd consider on my Time/Sonic. 

 

A team vs a GM or something would make more sense. 

[Parabola]

For me the question isn't whether the new sonic blast is less powerful at team support than the old version, that much is obvious from the numbers. The real question is whether the old version was too focused on team support, too much of an outlier to the other blast sets. I feel it was and that it can afford to lose some of that to make it function better in its primary purpose; as a blast set. It will still be the go to support focused blast set because -res at any magnitude is always useful.

[Pzn]

This is a change no one asked for.  This ruins the identity of the set while homogenizing the game play between ranged sets further.  It already had a unique role and this change makes it another boring blast set.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Pzn said:

This is a change no one asked for. 

I'm asking for it!  I like Sonic thematically, but I don't want to make characters focused solely on SBB and shaving seconds off AV fights in large teams.

 

Especially since it's still fine at those things.  Yes, not as good as it was, but it still puts out quite a bit of -res.

[Marbing]

13 hours ago, arcane said:

I don't understand... where are the pylon kill times between live vs test. Those are needed. The debuff numbers are meaningless to show us if you aren't going to try to represent the DPS situation as a whole.

Yeah just showing the debuff values is a bit misleading. What is your TTK on the Pylon before and after? There have been tests on this and clear times with sonic on regular content (Council for example) is faster than before. Not a little, but quite a bit faster than before. So I agree, as some said in here, Pylon results don't matter AS much but, if you are going to post Pylon stuff, show the times so we can see the WHOLE picture.

I will have to refer to @Galaxy Brain for the before and after clear times because I cant find them. Unless they were posted on this thread earlier and I am being to lazy to search for them. Which is definitely not the case! PS: It is the case.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Marbing
tYpINg is HAwrD

[Generator]

53 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I'm asking for it!  I like Sonic thematically, but I don't want to make characters focused solely on SBB and shaving seconds off AV fights in large teams.

 

Especially since it's still fine at those things.  Yes, not as good as it was, but it still puts out quite a bit of -res.

Amen.  IMO, getting some help for one of the worst DPS cases of a Ranged Attack set shouldn't require too much asking.

[arcane]

3 hours ago, Pzn said:

This is a change no one asked for.  This ruins the identity of the set while homogenizing the game play between ranged sets further.  It already had a unique role and this change makes it another boring blast set.

I too am asking for it and excitedly so. One of the best changes in the new page. Will make the most boring blast set not boring 🙂 

 

See how opinions are opinions like that?

[arcane]

5 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Not sure solo killing time is that useful a metric for a Support set to be honest. Soloing pylons isn't something I'd consider on my Time/Sonic. 

 

A team vs a GM or something would make more sense. 

It isn’t a support set. It’s a blast set. And yes, a team vs a GM should be a part of the testing but a small part since it’s a small part of the game. DPS is the first and foremost concern of any set in the “Ranged Damage” category of sets. It’s in the name.

Edited July 15, 2022 by arcane

[High_Beam]

4 hours ago, Pzn said:

This is a change no one asked for.  This ruins the identity of the set while homogenizing the game play between ranged sets further.  It already had a unique role and this change makes it another boring blast set.

Raises hand having asked for it.  Excited to dust off my acoustic Blaster 🙂

[Carnifax]

7 minutes ago, arcane said:

It isn’t a support set. It’s a blast set. And yes, a team vs a GM should be a part of the testing but a small part since it’s a small part of the game. DPS is the first and foremost concern of any set in the “Ranged Damage” category of sets. It’s in the name.

(I should have said AT rather than set but hey)

 

Ranged Damage is the lesser of the two Sets for Defenders (who are a support AT). And quite often I build / choose my defenders on the Support aspect of the "blast" set rather than the DPS. That's why I have a Time/Sonic and a TA/Elec (for the sappage, which was improved in Page 3). 

 

So claiming they're "Blast sets" is misleading to be honest, they are both due to the fact each has some form of debuff attached (except Fire). 

 

But like I said I'm not calling for the changes to be scrapped. Just rejigged a tad because for Defenders at the moment they aren't great overall, but they could be fairly easily.