issue 27 Focused Feedback: Sonic Attack Revamp

[Hjarki]

18 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Single Shot and Pistols provide no resistance debuffing, though.

We don't care about the individual debuff on each attack. We care about the total debuffing for the entire rotation. The total debuffing for the entire rotation of Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle is similar in size to the total debuffing for the revamped Sonic - it's just that Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle do it with a single attack that consumes a fraction of their activation time while Sonic needs to eat up most of its activation time to accomplish the same thing.

[Chronicler J]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

 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.

 

Spent years doing this on my Empathy/Sonic. Now that this set is being nerfed for Support-focused roles, I have unlimited amounts of regret that I didn't pick Dark Blast to build a legacy instead. Those of you that do much easier content (anything sub-Relentless ASF and Hardcore AE) will never notice the difference. But I don't want to change what I play just to suit somebody's fancies per these changes; I refuse. The devs may believe the game is "telling" us to play a certain way, yet for the last 3 years my group and I have challenged the notion of what is or is not possible in this game. Those experiences taught me an incredible amount about Empathy and Sonic Attack. Once I understood how my blast set could be utilized, I never dreamed of being anything other than Sonic Attack, and I finally put to rest my fears of never having chosen Dark Blast...

 

Until now. The set is being reduced to garbage in the hands of a hard support character, completely knocking it out of the same tiering as Dark Blast, Radiation Blast, Ice Blast and Electrical Blast. Any one of those is a much better pick to build with if you want to focus on making a Support Defender. But I don't want to play those sets; I don't want to start over just because someone wanted to make Sonic Control and homogenize everything Sonic in the same breath. I don't care what anyone--even a dev--says about what a Blast set is meant to do. I know what this set was capable of, because I've been to the peaks this game has to offer.  If this is all I can look forward to with these changes, then I'd like to get a refund on the set, because I know per the Tanker changes that fighting this is like screaming into the wind. 

[Omega-202]

Just finished testing out the new Sonic on Blaster, Sentinel and Defender and I have to say I like it.  The DPA increases are a massive upgrade and you can really make a very solid "king of cones" build with Siren's Song now in the mix as a real damage power.  

 

Regarding the drop in debuff efficacy for Defenders...yeah, maybe that should be tweaked a bit, but all of the calls and crying to roll back the changes are being melodramatic in my opinion. 10%/10% sounds like a reasonable split instead of 12/8, and Scream/Shriek should have separate stacks but I fully understand why something needs to have been given up to not further push Sonic as the end-all-be-all Defender secondary.  After playing through some standard PI 54/8's on my rebuilt Storm/Sonic, I have to say I really don't notice a huge difference in taking down hard targets, and my AoE and single target chains are massively improved by now having 3 solid damaging cones to link.  I also have freed up a power pick and slots by not having to take 4 single target attacks.

 

However, the Sentinel Sonic is dead on arrival.  The target cap drop on Howl and Shockwave is basically game over for that build and I'm not seeing any way of making that work when I could be playing basically anything else.  I'm really hoping Sentinels as a whole can be salvaged in the next update.  

 

It would be a shame if these changes got reverted and I really hope they stay as it would let me dust off my Sonic Blaster who's been shelved for a long time.  

[Vhalidictes]

28 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Regarding the drop in debuff efficacy for Defenders...yeah, maybe that should be tweaked a bit, but all of the calls and crying to roll back the changes are being melodramatic in my opinion. 10%/10% sounds like a reasonable split instead of 12/8, and Scream/Shriek should have separate stacks but I fully understand why something needs to have been given up to not further push Sonic as the end-all-be-all Defender secondary.  After playing through some standard PI 54/8's on my rebuilt Storm/Sonic, I have to say I really don't notice a huge difference in taking down hard targets, and my AoE and single target chains are massively improved by now having 3 solid damaging cones to link.  I also have freed up a power pick and slots by not having to take 4 single target attacks.

 

However, the Sentinel Sonic is dead on arrival.  The target cap drop on Howl and Shockwave is basically game over for that build and I'm not seeing any way of making that work when I could be playing basically anything else.  I'm really hoping Sentinels as a whole can be salvaged in the next update.  

 

It would be a shame if these changes got reverted and I really hope they stay as it would let me dust off my Sonic Blaster who's been shelved for a long time.  

 

It's good to hear that the DPA is a massive improvement, although I'm still patching so I haven't tested it.

 

I concur that having the first two attacks not stack is punishing for Defenders. In fact.... there seems to be a common thread here.

 

Everything is A-OK for every AT but Defenders. So... don't change the Defender AT but make changes to the others? 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Vhalidictes

[Omega-202]

29 minutes ago, Vhalidictes said:

 

It's good to hear that the DPA is a massive improvement, although I'm still patching so I haven't tested it.

 

I concur that having the first two attacks not stack is punishing for Defenders. In fact.... there seems to be a common thread here.

 

Everything is A-OK for every AT but Defenders. So... don't change the Defender AT but make changes to the others? 

No, the changes are still amazing for Defenders, just that it feels like the numbers need tweaking on the -res system.  It feels like a HUGE upgrade while soloing or playing standard missions/trash clearing, but AV fights are slowed down.  Napkin math, my Storm/Sonic went from putting out -100% to like -60% resistance debuffs in average conditions.  I think the numbers should be tweaked to get it back up a bit.  Instead of 12/8, make it 10/10 or 8/12 on the debuff splits.  

[ScarySai]

At the end of the day, support classes, especially defenders want their big -res back. Give them that and you directly tackle the bulk of the complaints with the rework.

 

It's hard for me to take any potential 'concerns' with the stacking -res on the development side seriously when there's already so many more ways to do that with sets that aren't devoted to -res like sonic is.

Edited July 16, 2022 by ScarySai

[csr]

8 hours ago, Hjarki said:

We don't care about the individual debuff on each attack. We care about the total debuffing for the entire rotation. The total debuffing for the entire rotation of Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle is similar in size to the total debuffing for the revamped Sonic - it's just that Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle do it with a single attack that consumes a fraction of their activation time while Sonic needs to eat up most of its activation time to accomplish the same thing.

 

The use time really is a key comparison.  On my relatively high recharge Defender builds I can get around -25% stacking Piercing Rounds and Piercing Beam.  On my /Sonic I can maintain an average of about -48%.  However, it takes me about 35% of my time on the DP and BR toons, and about 70% of my time for Sonic.  It may seem like that should be higher, since the total cast time to get 4 -8s is 6.976s vs the 2.508s to 2.64s for the other two sets to get to -20%.  The reason it isn't is because there's no point in trying to stack buffs from the same power with Sonic.  However, it also means you have to be aware of when it is worth casting a power again or not, and if you aren't running the Power Analyzer, as I was in my testing, that isn't so easy to do.

 

Here are the Defender Minus-Res-seconds / ArcanaCast for all the relevant powers.  I include these simply because I had the Sonic ones for use in setting up my attack priority queue for my log parsing experiment.

 

 

Beam Rifle	Piercing Beam	-20% Res	10s dur	2.508s cast	-79.7%
Dual Pistols	Piercing Rounds	-20% Res	10s dur	2.64s cast	-75.6%
Sonic Attack	Shriek	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 10s dur	1.188s cast	-157.4%
Sonic Attack	Scream	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 10s dur	1.716s cast	-102.6%
Sonic Attack	Howl	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 8s dur	1.848s cast	-86.6%
Sonic Attack	Shout	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 12s dur	2.224s cast	-86.3%
Sonic Attack	Screech	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 15s dur	1.716s cast	-125.9%
Sonic Attack	Dreadful Wail	-12% & -8% Res	8s & 20s dur	2.112s cast	-121.2%

 

Notes:

• Because of stacking the comparisons are not like-to-like.
• Howl and Dreadful Wail are AoEs.

Edited July 17, 2022 by csr
Typos, many typos

[Galaxy Brain]

I think its a question of allowing it to still have the great -res while also getting huge buffs to the base stats. If the -res worked the same as live, why would you take another set as a defender?

 

This is why I am so curious about a head to head comparison of the same character doing the same content (map or AV, etc) while optimized for both live and beta sonic. That should give a solid data point about how it compares in practice with Damage and Res changes.

[csr]

Trying to take a new look at this, if I were to start with the idea of different debuffs as in the current implementation, then what I would have done was make the splits 8/12, had Shriek, Scream and Dreadful Wail have their own debuffs and have Howl, Shout and Screech share one.  That gets you the same -44% sans DW, but it removes the issues of T1+T2 that Blasters, Sentinels and Defenders (at lower levels) have, and it also reduces the time it takes you to get to -44% to about 4.62s (Shriek, Scream and Screech).

 

Anyway, I still like the basic idea of the changes, I just think the nerfage to the -Res component needs some tweaks.

Edited July 16, 2022 by csr
Clarity

[csr]

5 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I think its a question of allowing it to still have the great -res while also getting huge buffs to the base stats. If the -res worked the same as live, why would you take another set as a defender?

 

I think for hard-content min-maxers that's where Sonic Attack already sits on Live.  Buffing the DPS without changing the -Res would simply make it more of an outlier.

[Frosticus]

I know it probably isn't intended but sonic blast paired with cold/poison/dark and others was one of the most potent damage debuffers you could ever imagine. Frequently capable of flooring the damage of almost anything they faced due to the way that -res works with -dam.

 

I definitely know some cold/son defenders that specifically built for the purpose of debuffing enemy resistance and flooring their damage. Their personal damage output was not their focus to say the least.

 

I think these sonic changes look great, but I do feel bad for such unique builds disappearing just for the sake of more damage.

[Herotu]

On 7/12/2022 at 7:04 PM, The Curator said:

Sonic Attack Revamp

[..]

• Only one of these debuffs can be active on a target from the same caster at any given time. If a same-named debuff is applied on a foe, the previous debuff gets replaced (effectively refreshing the duration of the debuff)

 

Is this because it's the easiest way to do it? 

 

Because overwriting a 20 second debuff with a 10 second one is really bad. Could they perhaps take whichever has the longest timer/time remaining instead? Or is that much more difficult to code?

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Herotu said:

Is this because it's the easiest way to do it? 

 

Because overwriting a 20 second debuff with a 10 second one is really bad. Could they perhaps take whichever has the longest timer/time remaining instead? Or is that much more difficult to code?

I think you might be misinterpretting it. There are now 6 debuffs. They each can stack their debuff with the others, however if the same debuff is re-applied it will not stack with itself (it will refresh the duration, though).

 

The six debuffs are:

Short: 8s duration for 12% (all powers will apply this)

Lingering: 10s duration for 8% (Shriek and Scream will apply this)

Extended: 12s duration for 8% (Shout will apply this)

Prolonged: 15s duration for 8% (Screech will apply this)

Wide: 8s duration for 8% (Howl will apply this)

Extensive: 20s duration for 8% (Dreadful Wail will apply this)

 

So if you use Shriek, it will not remove your Dreadful Wail. They will add up. But if you use Shout, then use Shout again, you will just be replacing the Extended debuff but not add a 2nd one.

 

The only ones that don't add up with eachother are Shriek and Scream.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Bopper

[Zepp]

6 minutes ago, Bopper said:

I think you might be misinterpretting it. There are now 6 debuffs. They each can stack their debuff with the others, however if the same debuff is re-applied it will not stack with itself (it will refresh the duration, though).

 

The six debuffs are:

Short: 8s duration for 12% (all powers will apply this)

Lingering: 10s duration for 8% (Shriek and Scream will apply this)

Extended: 12s duration for 8% (Shout will apply this)

Prolonged: 15s duration for 8% (Screech will apply this)

Wide: 8s duration for 8% (Howl will apply this)

Extensive: 20s duration for 8% (Dreadful Wail will apply this)

 

So if you use Shriek, it will not remove your Dreadful Wail. They will add up. But if you use Shout, then use Shout again, you will just be replacing the Extended debuff but not add a 2nd one.

 

The only ones that don't add up with eachother are Shriek and Scream.

Thank you for this explanation

[Marshal_General]

What about the -20 res that the Sentinel's T1 and T2 attacks do? Do they stack?

If that no longer stacks when it did before, that would just be another kick in the quad.

[aethereal]

37 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

What about the -20 res that the Sentinel's T1 and T2 attacks do? Do they stack?

 

I assume you mean the sentinel inherent, which is -5% normally and an additional -20% when opportunity is activated.  That stacks with all the sonic attack resistance debuffs.

[MoonSheep]

15 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.

 

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.

 

i’d pose this question: are the devs and other people really unable to fathom that some people enjoy non-combat playstyles?

 

the homecoming playerbase looks down on any player which isn’t building for defense and trying to play every character like a scrapper

 

there are many of us on the game who were drawn to it years ago by its ability to have dyamic teams where some players support, some control and others attack

 

statistically defenders are played half as much as blasters and brutes. does it really help “balance” the game by introducing a change which makes the AT slightly less attractive to play?

[Gorgar]

Just ran most of the ITF on a big team on new hard mode, setting 2.  I was on my dark/sonic defender and I was *really* busy most of the time.  I definitely did not, after that, want to trade Scream in for a longer DPA attack such as Shout, nor did I have time for a lot of cone attacks.  I used Howl way less than I usually do, because there was always debuffing and healing to do, and when I had a free second I was hitting high-priority single tough targets with single-target faster attacks and stuns.  So I still think Shriek and Scream should not share a -res effect, as it punishes busy, team-oriented defenders when you're not steamrolling.

 

I'm less objecting to nerfing the -res values (of course, I'm not a fan) and more objecting to the way it seems to specifically target people that use a chain with the quickest attacks.  

[Myrmidon]

9 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I think its a question of allowing it to still have the great -res while also getting huge buffs to the base stats. If the -res worked the same as live, why would you take another set as a defender?

 

This is why I am so curious about a head to head comparison of the same character doing the same content (map or AV, etc) while optimized for both live and beta sonic. That should give a solid data point about how it compares in practice with Damage and Res changes.

After some adjustment, I believe that I have this comparison in-hand (since you aren’t going to do it, stat master😁). Stay tuned.

[Marbing]

3 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

After some adjustment, I believe that I have this comparison in-hand (since you aren’t going to do it, stat master😁). Stay tuned.

*anticipation intensifies* 

[Seed22]

7 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 

i’d pose this question: are the devs and other people really unable to fathom that some people enjoy non-combat playstyles?

 

the homecoming playerbase looks down on any player which isn’t building for defense and trying to play every character like a scrapper

 

there are many of us on the game who were drawn to it years ago by its ability to have dyamic teams where some players support, some control and others attack

 

statistically defenders are played half as much as blasters and brutes. does it really help “balance” the game by introducing a change which makes the AT slightly less attractive to play?

That last paragraph is what I have a problem with: You can’t just say “statistically” and expect to be right. Show me numbers. Because I have a lot of 50 fenders and I’m sure others do too. 

[Marshal_General]

11 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

I assume you mean the sentinel inherent, which is -5% normally and an additional -20% when opportunity is activated.  That stacks with all the sonic attack resistance debuffs.

I just wanted to make sure the changes didn't further screw over sentinels since the T1 and T2 -res don't stack. I am not sure how to test this.

[aethereal]

18 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

I just wanted to make sure the changes didn't further screw over sentinels since the T1 and T2 -res don't stack. I am not sure how to test this.

You can test it by getting the power analyzer and going and shooting something (a pylon is the trad choice) and analyzing its resistance.

 

But I honestly don't think you need to.  It would have been a huge amount of work for them to make the Sentinel inherent debuffs not stack with the Sonic debuffs.  There's pretty much no chance they accidentally screwed that up.

[MoonSheep]

40 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

That last paragraph is what I have a problem with: You can’t just say “statistically” and expect to be right. Show me numbers. Because I have a lot of 50 fenders and I’m sure others do too. 

 

 

 

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

 

 

"March 2020"