Cones...what's wrong with them?

[Troo]

4 hours ago, starro said:

Sadly this is my upcoming summer commute 

 

Hey that's the Ohio state flower.

[RCU7115]

10 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

The best cones are ice cream cones - with sprinkles

 

[cranebump]

I am a big fan of cones. But they always seem to overload them when they give you that third scoop of ice cream 🙂

[Psyonico]

14 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

The best cones are ice cream cones - with sprinkles

Waffle cones > sugar cones.

[Scarlet Shocker]

5 hours ago, RCU7115 said:

 

 

 

eat too many of these and you get...

 

 

conestipation

[twozerofoxtrot]

I like cones. I don't even mind melee cones if they're actually good powers (Proton Sweep, Shred, etc) but there are two issues I have with some of them that I think other players might as well.

 

1) Often they have longer animations. Long animations are usually reviled and typically only put up with for the tradeoff in damage. I might be wrong on this but cones seem to be built around the AoE DPA formulas without providing the damage spread or ease of use of ranged and melee AoE spheres. The cones that do shine have 75°+ arcs (melee) and DPA closer in line with single target attacks. 

 

2) At range especially it can be tricky to estimate what your cone pattern is going to look like. I'm not advocating for this, but if there were a diagram that let you know what your damage pattern was going to be on mouseover or something I think you'd find more people comfortable with accepting cones in their builds, as they'd be able to consistently maximize their shot placement (so to speak). As it currently stands, players have to invest time to understand their actual cone dispersion and even then it's basically an educated guess every time you fire the power. Personally I find that on ranged characters I haven't played in a while it takes me a few missions to relearn optimal cone positioning again. Not a big deal, but still a strike that 'fire and forget' sphere AoEs don't have to consider as much.

 

 

 

So yeah, cones are good. But there are some things that make them fussy and it's fair for people to take issue where they are like that.

[ForeverLaxx]

My only issue with Cones is the Dark Blast set. I like the set overall, but I do not like how every cone attack is a different range and cone angle. Having to do the Dark Blast Shuffle for efficiency is annoying.

[tidge]

6 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

My only issue with Cones is the Dark Blast set. I like the set overall, but I do not like how every cone attack is a different range and cone angle. Having to do the Dark Blast Shuffle for efficiency is annoying.

 

My 'solution' was to slot the shorter range cones for Range, evening up the range of attacks. This worked fine, up until the Fast Snipe changes. Now my cone attacks have longer range than my Fast Snipes.

 

Full disclosure: I originally delayed the choice of Tentacles until late in the build, this helped keep me from being bothered by the different ranges as much.

[carroto]

On 2/5/2023 at 10:59 PM, ForeverLaxx said:

My only issue with Cones is the Dark Blast set.

 

This is what I was thinking as I read through this thread.  I've never understood the cone hate but Dark Blast is just really poorly designed in that regard.

[carroto]

On 2/6/2023 at 5:13 AM, tidge said:

My 'solution' was to slot the shorter range cones for Range

 

Then your TT will be crazy wide at the end, but NF will still be narrow and hard to hit many enemies with, at least in my experience.  Going off of memory NF is a 20 degree cone with an 80 foot range.  Even at the end of the range it's not that wide.  Maybe fine if you have a tank gathering all the enemies into a tight clump, but otherwise in my experience it won't catch them all.  TT is fine but NF is the problem in that set for me.

[tidge]

I dunno, when my Dark/Time blaster is knocking down entire spawns when solo. On PUGs he's knocking down the next spawns as well.

[Seldom]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the cone target cap, ranged targeted AoE's cap out at 16 while ranged cones cap at 10. This means in large team/high target situations a sizeable number of targets will be unscathed by cones that an AoE would hit. This is why cone-heavy sets like assault rifle, especially full auto, is actually not as good as similar sets with more traditional AoE's for mowing down mobs. 

This is besides the whole positioning issue, where cones require you to line things up. I don't mind this part, but the target cap difference always confused me.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Barneysaurus said:

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the cone target cap, ranged targeted AoE's cap out at 16 while ranged cones cap at 10. This means in large team/high target situations a sizeable number of targets will be unscathed by cones that an AoE would hit. This is why cone-heavy sets like assault rifle, especially full auto, is actually not as good as similar sets with more traditional AoE's for mowing down mobs. 

 

Cones typically have a lower base recharge time than AoEs, in many cases, half the recharge of an AoE which deals comparable damage, which means they can be used more often and are likely to hit more total targets than AoEs which deal comparable damage.

 

Example:

• Fistful of Arrows - 8 second recharge, 56.93 damage
• Explosive Arrow - 16 second recharge, 56.31 damage

In any combat situation expected to last longer than the recharge time plus animation time of Fistful, you'll always deal more damage with Fistful than you will with Explosive.  Yes, you can hit 16 targets with Explosive Arrow, but you can hit 20 targets with Fistful in the same time it takes for Explosive to animate and recharge, or hit the same 10 targets and deal twice as much damage as you could with Explosive.  Most cones work this way.  They trade a higher target cap for more frequent usage, and typically come out ahead.

[Erratic1]

2 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Cones typically have a lower base recharge time than AoEs, in many cases, half the recharge of an AoE which deals comparable damage, which means they can be used more often and are likely to hit more total targets than AoEs which deal comparable damage.

 

 

*glances at Dark Blast: Nightfall, considers the 20° arc, then wonders just how long the cone would have to be hit the cap, never minding the likelihood of finding that many foes arranged appropriately*

[High_Beam]

I tried but I had to jump in.

[Luminara]

44 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

*glances at Dark Blast: Nightfall, considers the 20° arc, then wonders just how long the cone would have to be hit the cap, never minding the likelihood of finding that many foes arranged appropriately*

 

I mained a TA/Dark for several years on the original servers.  It's really not difficult.

[Erratic1]

29 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

I mained a TA/Dark for several years on the original servers.  It's really not difficult.

 

You hit cap with a 20° arc power with a range of 40' regularly?  Is it even physcially possible to arrange opponents to fit in it?

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:

You hit cap with a 20° arc power with a range of 40' regularly?

 

NF's range is 60'.  It has a 15' spread at 43' and a 21' spread at 60'.  You can fit a house in that square footage, you can certainly hit 10 targets.  As I said, I did it for years on the original servers.

[Erratic1]

Just now, Luminara said:

 

NF's range is 60'.  It has a 15' spread at 43' and a 21' spread at 60'.  You can fit a house in that square footage, you can certainly hit 10 targets.  As I said, I did it for years on the original servers.

 

Hmmm...thought I checked it at City of Data and saw 40'. Clearly, rechecking, I must've misread.

[biostem]

Don't underestimate the value of range enh's in cones, either...

[Erratic1]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

Don't underestimate the value of range enh's in cones, either...

 

That I most assuredly don't. I just hate using them because they squeeze out room for set bonuses.

[biostem]

12 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

That I most assuredly don't. I just hate using them because they squeeze out room for set bonuses.

Yeah... not being able to "have it all" can stink sometimes...

[Erratic1]

6 minutes ago, biostem said:

Yeah... not being able to "have it all" can stink sometimes...

 

You can never have it all regardless.

 

My  Sentinel however does all sort of cheatie things to get extra range, like splitting up the ATO set and using Bio/Offense stance.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:

You can never have it all regardless.

 

My  Sentinel however does all sort of cheatie things to get extra range, like splitting up the ATO set and using Bio/Offense stance.

OK, and?  That's not "cheatie" - set bonuses have certain rules as to how they are applied and such.  I'm not sure what your point is?  Sentinels also have shorter ranges by default.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

OK, and?  That's not "cheatie" - set bonuses have certain rules as to how they are applied and such.  I'm not sure what your point is?  Sentinels also have shorter ranges by default.

 

Its cheatie in the context that they are methods which are difficult to combine if you are not playing a Bio sentinel.