issue 27 Focused Feedback: Sonic Attack Revamp

[arcane]

38 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

(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. 

As I said, if others are in agreement that they would rather sink *all changes to the set for Defenders only* than lose their full 20% debuff, I will just enjoy the buff on my Blaster and leave my only Sonic Blast Defender in the trash. As the devs said, the strength of the 20% debuff was keeping them from buffing the set, so, yes, calls to retain the debuff equate to calls to scrap the changes as far as what they’re willing to do.

 

I think that’s stupid as hell but hey I’m compromising amirite.

Edited July 15, 2022 by arcane

[Gorgar]

20 minutes ago, arcane said:

As I said, if others are in agreement that they would rather sink *all changes to the set for Defenders only* than lose their full 20% debuff, I will just enjoy the buff on my Blaster and leave my only Sonic Blast Defender in the trash. As the devs said, the strength of the 20% debuff was keeping them from buffing the set, so, yes, calls to retain the debuff equate to calls to scrap the changes as far as what they’re willing to do.

 

I think that’s stupid as hell but hey I’m compromising amirite.

Is this ^ necessary?

 

I for one am happy with /sonic on defenders as it is and don’t want this change for defenders.  No objection for the other ATs.

[arcane]

4 minutes ago, Gorgar said:

Is this ^ necessary?

 

I for one am happy with /sonic on defenders as it is and don’t want this change for defenders.  No objection for the other ATs.

Then you and I are in agreement that /Sonic Defenders can be left alone if that’s the consensus, sooo… is what necessary?

[Sovera]

Defenders keep on chiming (see what I did there?) so loudly the changes will end up being scrapped like the obviously better changes to Rage because it could no longer be stacked.

[noogens]

I think the changes (for defender) are fantastic. I never felt the original set’s abysmal damage was worth tradeoff for the debuffs.  It feels like a proper blast set now. You can actually be part of the dps instead of just firing a howl out occasionally and do nothing between heals (I don’t play that way but have seen instances of this in pugs).  
 

The solo and small teaming ability are greatly enhanced which allows more versatility for the set in general.  I get that people can’t stack crazy amount of -res on targets but that only matters in niche situations. Being better overall 99% of the time is easily worth it for me.
 

Tested on storm/sonic and TA/sonic defenders. 

[Glorious]

I did some pylon testing with an Electrical Affinity/Sonic Attack defender. Same build on Brainstorm and Live.

 

Incarnate stuff:

- Alpha: Agility Core Paragon

- Interface: Degenerative Radial Flawless Interface

- Judgement: Slotted but unused

- Destiny: Barrier Core

- Lore: Banished Pantheon Core Superior Ally (summoned)

- Hybrid: Assault Radial Embodiment (slotted but not toggled)

 

=--------------

Live:

01:29.00 - 89s

01:22.60 - 82.6s

01:17.73 - 77.73s

01:31.91 - 91.91s (Had to heal a pet because of the dropship)

 

Avg: 01:25.31 - 85.31s

 

=--------------

Brainstorm:

01:21.11 - 81.11s

01:15.94 - 75.94s

01:06.06 - 66.06s

01:02.78 - 62.78s

 

Avg: 01:11.47 - 71.47s (Fuck Mids paper tigers, it's all about DPA, baby!)

 

=--------------

 

I have another build on Brainstorm that is even faster. Siren's Song is amazing now.

 

My first attempt was without Lore pets, but that took too long lol. Perhaps someone with a better suited build (cold, kin, poison, storm etc.) could do some testing.

There's a pretty big difference between the slowest and fastest time on Brainstorm. Maybe I got better (doubt it) or there's some Lore shenanigans at work. I don't really do pylon testing.

 

=--------------

 

Edit: I felt bad about the 01:31 time on live, so I ran one more. New numbers below:

 

Spoiler

Live:

01:29.00 - 89s

01:22.60 - 82.6s

01:17.73 - 77.73s

01:31.91 - 91.91s (Had to heal a pet because of the dropship)

01:11.46 - 71.46s

 

Avg: 01:25.31 - 85.31s

Avg: 01:20.2 - 80.2s

 

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Glorious

[Burnt Umber]

For me, I use Sonic Blast on a Corruptor, and my experience soloing on Beta has been mixed.

 

On the one hand, my attack chain of Shockwave -> Howl -> Siren's Song feels more seamless now with the changes to recharge/cast times.  Similarly, having a single target attack chain with Scream and Shout is not as draggy as it is on Homecoming due to their activation time changes.

 

On the other hand, the change to damage on Howl (fixing the 1.0 scale damage to 0.66 scale damage) is sort of mitigated with the changes to damage on Siren's Song (bumping it's damage up to 1.0 scale damage).  However, I use Siren's Song as an actual mez so having to re-slot it for damage is a bit annoying.  Similarly, I normally skip Screech in favor of the hold I pick up in my Patron Power Pool, so the changes to Screech sort of necessitates that I drop the hold to get it and slot it for damage.

 

Overall, the set on Beta feels feels more slick as I chain powers together; at the same time, I feel the set has shifted from blasting and mezzing to blasting with mezzing as a happy coincidence.  I do wish that Siren's Song and Screech had their ranges extended to 50 feet and 80 feet, respectively, to make them more in line with their new roles as damage powers used in rotation.  I like the direction of the changes and welcome more changes to the set to help it in relation to other blast sets.

[csr]

15 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Not sure solo killing time is that useful a metric for a Support set to be honest.

 

But you see... it's not a Support set, it's a Blast set.

 

When these changes first hit beta I had the initial reaction that it really wrecked a bunch of my builds.  Then I quickly realized why; because my Sonic Attack builds were all made with the idea of maximizing the -Res (i.e. the support element) and using other powers to mitigate the short-comings (i.e, the DPS and cast times) of Sonic Attack.  So naturally they didn't fare well with the new version.

 

I still don't like that the mechanics of what stacks and when are a bit hard to explain to the uninitiated.  And I don't like that the T1 and T2 share a debuff because those 2 powers are tied to the inherent abilities of both Blasters and Sentinels (2 of the 4 ATs that get the set).  I also think the set has become a bit of a power pick and slot pig.  But I don't think any criticism that is based on the idea that the set is supposed to be a Support set really is going to hold much water with the devs.  A "support-y" Blast set, sure, but not an outright Support set.

[csr]

8 hours ago, Sovera said:

Defenders keep on chiming (see what I did there?) so loudly the changes will end up being scrapped like the obviously better changes to Rage because it could no longer be stacked.

The funny thing is that the last Rage change allowed it to be stacked, just with the bug that prevent the crash fixed.  What we ended up getting was the crash fixed anyway and the method of avoiding that the changes provided removed.

[AustinSmith]

@Myrmidon and I spent a couple hours on Excelsior and Brainstorm with a Beam/Energy blaster and a Kinetic/Sonic defender in a variety of content to determine how the -Res for defenders has been affected, and whether the DPA increase was enough to make up for the loss in utility.

 

In each test case, a macro was used to mark a time in local chat and signal for us to engage, and when the map was cleared (or the pylon was destroyed), a second macro was used to mark another time in local chat (or in the case of the pylon, the time shown on death). Identical builds were used between the two environments; no incarnates were used other than alpha, so no destinies, no hybrids, no judgments.

Firstly, we tested +4/x8 Council PI radio mishes just to test trash mob clearing:

Live Times (Old Sonic):
4 minutes 5 seconds
4 minutes 7 seconds
7 minutes 2 seconds

11 minutes 11 seconds

9 minutes 56 seconds

 

Average Time: 7 minutes 16 seconds

Brainstorm Times (New Sonic):
6 minutes 40 seconds

9 minutes 23 seconds

7 minutes 43 seconds

7 minutes 14 seconds

7 minutes 7 seconds

 

Average Time: 7 minutes 37 seconds

Given that mish maps can vary, and that the shortest times and longest times overall belong to live, I'm going to conclude there isn't enough evidence to conclude in terms of general mish sweeping, that defender Sonic has been negatively affected by these changes.

 

Then we tested killing pylons in RWZ to see how higher damage with lower -Res vs lower damage with higher -Res fares in a duo environment (and here's where the numbers are more interesting:

Live Times (Old Sonic):
1 minute 38 seconds

2 minutes 11 seconds

1 minute 37 seconds

Average Time: 1 minute 49 seconds

Brainstorm Times (New Sonic):

2 minutes 18 seconds

2 minutes

2 minutes 1 second

 

Average Time: 2 minutes 6 seconds

None of the Brainstorm times were below 2 minutes (although one was right on the mark), whereas Live tended to beat the Open Beta times by around 17 seconds. I'd consider that a fairly substantial gap, it's not like radio mishes with varied maps and encounters, this is a pylon that is engaged practically the same way every time (as the blaster, I was doing my best to keep my attack chain identical between all tests).

Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain.

[Bopper]

3 hours ago, AustinSmith said:

Myrmidon and I spent a couple hours on Excelsior and Brainstorm with a Beam/Energy blaster and a Kinetic/Sonic defender in a variety of content to determine how the -Res for defenders has been affected, and whether the DPA increase was enough to make up for the loss in utility

First I'd like to commend you and Myrmidon on your testing. I like the approach used and it is an interesting data point. There was some questions left to be had with the reporting though, so I reached out to Myrmidon to ask about the build they used for the Beta test.

 

They mentioned it was a direct Live port and the build did not have Screech nor Siren's Song. I'll be curious to see how the test times will change when those get incorporated into the build. Personally, I'm surprised the gap between Live and Beta wasn't wider, but then again a Kin buffing a blaster will do most of the heavy lifting anyways so perhaps there won't be much of a change in performance. Only more testing will tell.

 

The lack of Screech on the pylon was definitely a handicap as that is a loss of 8% to your maximum resistance debuff as well as a loss of pretty good damage. If you guys test this again I'll be curious what the impact may show. I also hope you consider testing against a high level AV to compare the impacts when purple patch plays a role. For now the pylon is a good representation of an even con AV so no need to test against that. But a level 54 AV would be an interesting high-end data point.

[Vhalidictes]

On 7/12/2022 at 2:12 PM, Crasical said:

 

Good: faster animations, Siren Song recharges faster and does more damage (.69 damage scale more)

Meh: Howl recharges 2 sec secs faster, Shockwave recharges 3 secs slower, gained 0.0946 damage scale between them. 

Cons: enormously lowered ability to apply -res. Max targets on two cones reduced from 10 to 6 (I'm on a Sentinel).
 

It looks *really* bad on paper. I'll reserve further judgement until I can get home and test it myself, but...

 

I've never been motivated to bother with the Beta server, but I guess I need to now.

 

Back of the napkin math says my Sonic/Sonic Defender duo's damage is HALVED. And they are *not* damage monsters as-is.

 

Currently I'm stacking 20% -Res 4 times per character for -160% (after building attacks up)

 

Now, we're looking at 12+12+8+8+8+8 == 56% -Res if I change their builds to take more attacks, and -40% if I don't. Holy crapballs.

 

I guess the good news is that I'll need to get some use out of (and maybe even slot) Sonic Siphon every fight with it's nice long animation and hit check now?

Edited July 16, 2022 by Vhalidictes

[JKPhage]

I know this is a *slight* tangent, but I was referred to this topic specifically by a GM on Discord after raising a discussion about it.

 

While you guys are doing this work on Sonic sets, can you please please please look at porting the musical note vfx over to it as a power customization option? Symphonic Control shows that it is 100% compatible with sonic-style attack animations, and it was originally straight sonic attacks used by Talons of Vengeance. People were begging for it all the way back on Live, and I even made a topic suggesting it along with numerous other options a few *years* ago that got plenty of replies and discussion going about it. Recently made a new thread with this and several others that you can read over here to hear my whole schpiel on the subject. While I'm not gonna argue the merits of all of these options here (even though they're all 100% worth the team putting some time into for a huge chunk of player customization options), I'll at least say that while you've already got your hand in this particular cookie jar between the sonic revamp and the release of Symphonic Control, it would make all the sense in the world for this to happen. Doubly so because Sonic Assault was created and released alongside Symphonic Control and not having an option to switch it to a visual style that perfectly matches the two when they're already thematically compatible is just bizarre.

 

Basically, please for the love of all that is holy, port the music effects to all the sonic sets. It's possible. We know it's possible. It would allow things to match well. It would give one of the blandest looking sets a huge facelift. It would allow for a ton of fun character concepts. We asked for it from the moment it existed on Live. Some of us have been asking for it since Homecoming has existed. Please.

[Cidri]

As a defender I mostly took Sonic Blast because of the -Resistance. And that is now nerfed. Still, I think this is a good change, as it gives Defenders an actual choice of which blast set to take. With the old setup, a Defender that did not pick Sonic Blast was gimping themselves, and if one option is obviously better than all the others, that removes choice rather than adding choice.

 

I was thinking, maybe Fire Blast for a Defender could get some debuff effect. As it is, its additional effect is damage, which does not benefit from a Defender's high debuff multipliers. To add Fire Blast to the list of viable defender secondaries. Perhaps one of the more obscure debuffs we rarely see.

 

AustinSmith wrote:
Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain.

 

It is true that a solo Blaster's or Defender's effectiveness is not much changed, a Defender is usually in a team environment. A reduction in the -Res dramatically changes how much the Defender contributes to the team. This should be compared to other Defender secondaries and the effect of their debuff component - for example, Dark Blast gives a significant -ToHit and thus contributes to the entire team's survival.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Cidri

[Erratic1]

22 hours ago, Pzn said:

Asked for as in the past tense.  I don't mean cheerleading.

 

I never much cared for Blasters on Live and it was only on Homecoming I finally found a Blaster I could get out of the low 30s with and take to 50 (BR/MC fwiw). Having finally succeeded in taking a blaster to 50 I decided to try another one, this time Sonic/Trick Arrow despite the charts saying how miserably it compared to other blast sets. It helped to think of him as my support oriented blaster. I got him to 50 then put him aside as there were just too many, "...well the damage is not great but it's okay because..." moments that frankly just were not true.

 

I came into CoH during beta playing Defenders, had a Defender as my first character to max level, and played Sonic on live and again here on Homecoming as a Defender. I appreciate the debuffing it does for Defenders but...the secondary effects of secondary powers should not be so central to a Defender. Yes, secondary debuff effects have always been better for Defenders than for other ATs but the primary powersets are "primary" for a reason. You put Enervating Field down or drop Tar Patch for an ongoing, big -Res effect. It is hard for me to see saying, "I cannot squeeze out ultimate value on a team due to the secondary effects of my secondary powerset" as a good reason for the set to be miserably behind the curve for when it is being used as a primary set for three other ATs.

 

Perhaps the AT should never have been ported to Blasters (I get grief when I object to the notion that every powerset should be available to every AT) but that ship has sailed (bring on the Super Strength scrappers and Energy Aura tankers and let the good times roll). A blast set which trails all others at dealing damage should be improved in that function. This change does that.

[Hjarki]

I'm having trouble thinking of this as anything but a straight-up nerf of an already underpowered set.

 

In terms of Defenders, the easiest way to see this would be to compare Beam/Pistols to Sonic. Both Beam and Pistols have standard, full power attacks and then also have a stackable -20% resist debuff that can be (almost) doubled to give them equivalent debuffing to the revamped Sonic. But the penalty Sonic pays for equivalent -resist debuffing is 85% strength attacks across the board.

 

The nature of how those debuffs are applied is also problematic. It's one thing to pay a -15% damage penalty on Shriek the first time you use it. But every subsequent time you use this 3 sec recharge attack within the next 10 sec or so, you're paying the penalty while not receiving any benefit in return.

[arcane]

29 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

I'm having trouble thinking of this as anything but a straight-up nerf of an already underpowered set.

So you literally can’t fathom/imagine (1) the massive buff Blasters/Corruptors/Sentinels just got across the board and (2) the buff Defenders got outside of the edge case of debuff stacking on hard targets.

 

It really discourages me to say this but these great buffs are going to get rolled back at the rate this feedback thread is going. I was looking forward to taking some characters out of the garbage but oh well.

[AustinSmith]

6 hours ago, Cidri said:

AustinSmith wrote:
Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain.

 

It is true that a solo Blaster's or Defender's effectiveness is not much changed, a Defender is usually in a team environment. A reduction in the -Res dramatically changes how much the Defender contributes to the team. This should be compared to other Defender secondaries and the effect of their debuff component - for example, Dark Blast gives a significant -ToHit and thus contributes to the entire team's survival.

The test was not solo; this was a sonic defender paired with a blaster in all of my test cases. Yeah, a duo is the smallest "team" size and barely is equivalent to the example of a full 8 person team, but I need more testers to be able to contribute to better data on live + Brainstorm.

[aethereal]

7 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'm having trouble thinking of this as anything but a straight-up nerf of an already underpowered set.

 

In terms of Defenders, the easiest way to see this would be to compare Beam/Pistols to Sonic. Both Beam and Pistols have standard, full power attacks and then also have a stackable -20% resist debuff that can be (almost) doubled to give them equivalent debuffing to the revamped Sonic. But the penalty Sonic pays for equivalent -resist debuffing is 85% strength attacks across the board.

 

The nature of how those debuffs are applied is also problematic. It's one thing to pay a -15% damage penalty on Shriek the first time you use it. But every subsequent time you use this 3 sec recharge attack within the next 10 sec or so, you're paying the penalty while not receiving any benefit in return.

 

I don't know why we're comparing Piercing Rounds and Piercing Beam to Shriek.  Isn't Screech a better comparison?  Screech looks pretty favorable in comparison to either, to me.

 

 

7 hours ago, arcane said:

So you literally can’t fathom/imagine (1) the massive buff Blasters/Corruptors/Sentinels just got across the board and (2) the buff Defenders got outside of the edge case of debuff stacking on hard targets.

 

I'm not convinced that Sentinels got a buff.  They already had the highly damaging Screech, which I think is one of the big benefits to the other three ranged attack classes, and they got the target cap reductions.  For them, it seems like more of a wash.

[Hjarki]

16 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

I don't know why we're comparing Piercing Rounds and Piercing Beam to Shriek.  Isn't Screech a better comparison?  Screech looks pretty favorable in comparison to either, to me.

 

We're not. We're comparing Single Shot and Pistols to Shriek - and realizing that they're significantly better attacks that come in a set that provides roughly the same overall -resist debuffing.

[arcane]

15 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

I'm not convinced that Sentinels got a buff.  They already had the highly damaging Screech, which I think is one of the big benefits to the other three ranged attack classes, and they got the target cap reductions.  For them, it seems like more of a wash.

True but I consider the target cap reductions bug fixes and not part of the buff package. Those were changed because they weren’t following standard formulas. 
 

Either way, maybe I better not bother making new Sonic Blast toons to PL before the patch since a serious fraction of posters appear to want to sink the DPA buffs.

[aethereal]

6 hours ago, Hjarki said:

We're not. We're comparing Single Shot and Pistols to Shriek - and realizing that they're significantly better attacks that come in a set that provides roughly the same overall -resist debuffing.

Uh.

 

Single Shot and Pistols provide no resistance debuffing, though.

 

6 hours ago, arcane said:

True but I consider the target cap reductions bug fixes and not part of the buff package. Those were changed because they weren’t following standard formulas. 

I mean, maybe so, but the set is still not clearly better after the patch than before, on Sentinels.

[arcane]

9 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I mean, maybe so, but the set is still not clearly better after the patch than before, on Sentinels.

Ok maybe so. Anyway the point is I was planning to have real fun on Sonic Blast and y’all really tryna ruin it 😢

 

I have 15+ blasters and 15+ defenders and in both cases Sonic Blast is the absolute bottom of the barrel toon with painfully sluggish damage. 

Edited July 16, 2022 by arcane

[Marbing]

8 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I mean, maybe so, but the set is still not clearly better after the patch than before, on Sentinels.

You would have to test clear time, live vs brainstorm to determine if those changes were as detrimental as supposed. Has anyone done this with a Sentinel?

[aethereal]

Here's what I'd do with Sonic Attack:

 

1.  Change the non-stacking/stacking split from 12/8 to 10/10.

 

Justification:  This doesn't really matter.  Nobody is actually going to notice the difference in stacking an additional 2% resist debuff per power.  But it will mean that three power applications can get to -40% resist debuff and despite the fact that 36% and 40% are essentially identical, it will make people feel better.

 

2.  Give Shriek and Scream separate debuffs.

 

Justification:  This will make the early game flow more smoothly, especially for Defenders who have to wait a long time to get Screech and Siren's Song.  People who prioritize taking both T1 and T2s for Blasters or Sentinels because of their inherents won't feel as victimized (and given Blaster and Sentinel debuff values, the additional resist is negligible).  If someone on a Defender at level 50 really wants to take a single-target power because it allows them to stack 10% more resist debuff, I mean...  Cool, bro, you do you.

 

3.  I dunno, maybe give Sentinels a little something more, not sure, Sentinels are a mess anyway.

 

4.  SHIP IT.  The basic idea of the changes is great.  People aren't spending enough time on the big cast time reductions of Howl and Shout.