Focused Feedback: Blast Power Set Updates

[Player-1]

Keep in mind that Assault Rifle also has more AoE powers than Archery when making a comparison between the two. Archery has Fistful of Arrows, Explosive Arrow, and Rain of Arrows. Assault Rifle has Buckshot, M30 grenade, Flamethrower, Ignite, and Full Auto. The entire kit is often considered with such changes where a significant increase to one power in context of the rest of the powers could sway performance in unintended ways.

[Gobbledigook]

44 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

In our internal tests, having a 16 target cap nuke at a 60s cooldown was simply too much. Increasing the target cap to 16 is not possible without also increasing its recharge significantly, but rather retain some of the set identity than homogenize the nuke.

Could i ask if the Sentinel version of Full Auto is doing the correct damage? It seems low compared to other AT's version ( and even other Sentinel T9's) considering theirs recharges much faster. It shows 2 different sets of damage but it only does the first set mostly.

[Captain Powerhouse]

8 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

Could i ask if the Sentinel version of Full Auto is doing the correct damage? It seems low compared to other AT's version ( and even other Sentinel T9's) considering theirs recharges much faster. It shows 2 different sets of damage but it only does the first set mostly.

 

It does the correct amount of damage, all sentinel T9s are balanced in entirely different ways, closer to melee AT mini-nukes like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod (not carbon copied, just closer to them) than to Blaster/Defender/Corruptor nukes.

 

The typical Sentinel nuke is a sphere and does the bulk of its damage only to the smallest area in the center, cones cant do that, so instead of that Full Auto for sentinels randomizes how many targets in the cone will get hit for the bonus damage that would normally only hit those foes in the exact center.

[Derek Icelord]

I dunno if the reversion is set in stone, but I'd much rather have Aim over Beanbag. Blasters already have plenty of control options in their secondary and Assault Rifle could really use the damage boost.

[Struck]

Removing incinerate for a clicky power removes the one unique power in the set. My first set was AR blaster with traps. With Homecoming I switched to Martial instead of traps. I've got strong hand to hand with KD and stun plus a pool of fire at my feet to keep things lively. Sometimes I need to clear a doorway or create a choke point. Sometimes I light a guy on fire that I've just knocked down, war is hell. Making the fire more clingy so that it does more damage away from the initial targeted site might address damage concerns. Beanbag is kind of a novelty that I never get. Guess Aim would be ok. We will adapt. 

[Bionic_Flea]

14 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

This is excellent feedback. Cant promise anything but will look at available options.

 

I just had a crazy idea, but not sure that it's codable in this system.  Could you make a stun (or any mez really) that is more powerful at lower levels and less powerful at higher levels?  That way it is more helpful at lower levels where just having a single extra opponent can be life or death vs later levels where you have multiple ways of either eliminating the opponent faster, better personal survivability, or other forms of mitigation.

[Gobbledigook]

Is Mental blast for Sentinel's getting the Blaster or defender/Corruptor treatment? it is only slightly more damage than the corruptors version. A DPA of 36.63 is very low for a Sentinel and is not worth taking at all.

[Booper]

As I said yesterday, feedback on Aim is off-topic at this point. If you wish to have that conversation, please do so in the thread created here. Going forward, feedback needs to be on what is currently on test. I hope I don't have to say this again.

 

If you need a refresher on the focused feedback guidelines, you can read them here.

[Super Atom]

14 minutes ago, Booper said:

As I said yesterday, feedback on Aim is off-topic at this point. If you wish to have that conversation, please do so in the thread created here. Going forward, feedback needs to be on what is currently on test. I hope I don't have to say this again.

 

If you need a refresher on the focused feedback guidelines, you can read them here.

 

Is there a point to going to my thread and discussing changes? Are you willing to change beanbag to something else like a follow up power? A lot of people are completely disenfranchised right now because it kinda feels like you aren't even willing to hear feedback or try other solutions. I'm not trying to give you a hard time here I'm just being honest with you. It really does feel like the overwhelming majority of people who dislike the changes aren't being heard in favor of a very small mysteriously absent portion of players. If you're still open to ideas and willing to make changes you should probably say so, because otherwise everyone is wasting their time and is correct in it's over.

 

If it's over then It's over, just be honest about it being over.

[Booper]

2 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

Is there a point to going to my thread and discussing changes? Are you willing to change beanbag to something else like a follow up power? A lot of people are completely disenfranchised right now because it kinda feels like you aren't even willing to hear feedback or try other solutions. I'm not trying to give you a hard time here I'm just being honest with you. It really does feel like the overwhelming majority of people who dislike the changes aren't being heard in favor of a very small mysteriously absent portion of players. If you're still open to ideas and willing to make changes you should probably say so, because otherwise everyone is wasting their time and is correct in it's over.

 

If it's over then It's over, just be honest about it being over.

If you come up with a good idea in that thread, we'll see it. But I will not be able to give you a guarantee that those ideas will get implemented. Right now, we need testing done on the changes currently on Brainstorm. And I need this channel to view that feedback. If you wish to test the current implementation and provide feedback on how it performs, please post it here. 

[Gemini2099]

Assault Rifle with the current changes on test is fast, fluid, and fun.

 

The new ignite flows well when you chaining other blast powers in AR. For example, FT + Ignite + Buckshot is actually very fluid now. and it feels like a more dynamic way to play.  Of course the biggest improvement is that FT no longer has a delay which I think is a huge QoL improvement.  I personally like these minor QoL improvements to powers as it allows to retain the original flavor of the power but still improving enough to be noticeable.

 

 

 

 

[Ice Ember]

6 hours ago, Booper said:

If you come up with a good idea in that thread, we'll see it. But I will not be able to give you a guarantee that those ideas will get implemented. Right now, we need testing done on the changes currently on Brainstorm. And I need this channel to view that feedback. If you wish to test the current implementation and provide feedback on how it performs, please post it here. 

Adding a - defense and - resistance to Beanbag would be thematic. The target is disoriented and less able to defend themselves.

 

I probably won't add it to my AR FF corruptor after a rebuild but it might make it in at 49.

[blue4333]

it sucks that the good changes i.e. Psychic Blast and whatnot are being delayed by beanbag. i want my psychic pew pew pls

[Wavicle]

2 hours ago, blue4333 said:

it sucks that the good changes i.e. Psychic Blast and whatnot are being delayed by beanbag. i want my psychic pew pew pls

Don’t stress, there are plenty of other things the patch is waiting on besides Beanbag.

[Gobbledigook]

AR is much better now. I would have preferred Aim over BB but that could have made the set OP i think lol and not every blast set has Aim.. It plays nicely though.

 

 

[Super Atom]

So if Ignite is higher damage to compensate for Aim, Why does it need the fear? The fear is really off putting tbh. Especially when it comes time for using it as a ST attack for soloing GM's/AV's/EB's they run around like track stars.

[Captain Powerhouse]

On 4/17/2023 at 5:58 PM, cmmnoble said:

Most of the discussion around the changes to disorient/stun duration for Suppressive Fire has revolved around the changes for the fire/cold/toxic ammo types available through the Swap Ammo power. Missing from the discussion is the fact that Suppressive Fire can be used without taking Swap Ammo.

 

Also missing from the discussion is the effect of the changes for players who don't use set bonuses / procs, etc.

 

If you don't use Swap Ammo and have used only DOs or regular IOs, Suppressive Fire currently does so little damage that I would argue that its MAIN FUNCTIONALITY is the stun.

 

Everything that has been discussed regarding the impact of losing Beanbag's stun capability in the Assault Rifle set applies to Dual Pistol players too. (We also like to stun Lts during solo play in Striga Isle!)

 

Being able to stun enemies for a decent duration as part of the Dual Pistol kit also allows for more "blapper" style close in play, where you can make good use of the melee powers available in blaster secondary sets (such as in Martial Combat). With the changes to stun duration, this style of play is going to take a huge hit.

 

Before the change, my dp/mc blaster (level 50, Suppressive Fire enhanced with 2 vanilla IO disorient durations) has a stun duration of 17.49s. After the change, if I've done the math right, the stun duration with the same enhancements will be only 6.97s.

 

This feels like a "major disruption."

 

For solo leveling or small-team exemplaring, it will almost certainly be--since the stun is more helpful for survivability when you have access to fewer powers in the kit.

After the changes, the only way to regain more of the stun/disorient duration functionality I currently have would be to respec into Swap Ammo and OUT of one of the other fun powers I am currently using.

 

The stated reasons for the change is to make this a more damaging power for players who want to do more ST damage at range, but this should not come at the expense of blappers who want to make use of the melee secondary powers--and live to tell about it.

 

Latest patch should add a compromise for this. See patch notes.

[Mezmera]

For Suppressive Fire if we can quickly toggle off the ammo so it becomes standard the power should react as it was then we can toggle back on to Fire or Chem ammo for other attacks and all should react how it should then?

 

I say this as my blaster uses Fire ammo exclusively but to not lose an important attack and not have to respec entirely out of Swap Ammo I guess I can learn to detoggle if its not going to be buggy.  

[Marshal_General]

5 hours ago, Mezmera said:

For Suppressive Fire if we can quickly toggle off the ammo so it becomes standard the power should react as it was then we can toggle back on to Fire or Chem ammo for other attacks and all should react how it should then?

 

I say this as my blaster uses Fire ammo exclusively but to not lose an important attack and not have to respec entirely out of Swap Ammo I guess I can learn to detoggle if its not going to be buggy.  

I wonder if they can set it to be changed under power customization where you can flag a power to ignore swap ammo?

[Captain Powerhouse]

10 hours ago, Mezmera said:

For Suppressive Fire if we can quickly toggle off the ammo so it becomes standard the power should react as it was then we can toggle back on to Fire or Chem ammo for other attacks and all should react how it should then?

 

You should be able to swap ammo for each attack if you want, even today live. Give it a test run to see if you find any bugs.

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

You should be able to swap ammo for each attack if you want, even today live. Give it a test run to see if you find any bugs.

 

Yeah I went onto live last night and respec'd a few things on my defender and tried changing bullets between attacks.  Novel idea to leave some variety to the different bullets so you all are onto something here.  Usually I'd just stick to chem ammo on my defender for the harder content and then switch to fire ammo after like say the Vanguard fight on Aeon but changing bullets in the middle of a fight seems like something you'd like to do if you had the ability to do so seamlessly as a gun fighter. 

 

As someone well trained on Domination I did find it a bit harder to swap ammo between attacks but doable.  I was thinking of binding attacks to coincide with clicking the different ammo types but if I go out of sequence it could get messy so it'd be best to cognitively click the ammo on and off.  I think if there was a way to tie bullets and attacks together in a way like @Marshal_General is thinking then yeah it'd probably work out well for DP players.

 

As far as Piercing Rounds I think it's great that the debuff now works on all ammo types and now lasts 15s at the cost of no longer stacking which on the live version you could only be on standard ammo and it only really stacked for a few seconds anyways due to recharge and animation times.  I'd say the animation is still a wee bit long for trying to fit this in as an attack in your chain.  All in all I'd say this is fine but if it's possible to trim the animation a smidge or up the damage I'd say this power would offer quite a bit more to the power set.   

 

I'll test out swapping ammo on beta this weekend.   

[Gobbledigook]

I do not understand why Blasters Mental Blast does 102.6 damage yet the Sentinels Mental Blast only does 61.17 damage. The activation is the same except recharge time and Blasters have a far better T1. Their damage scales aren't hugely different so why so low for Sentinel's? Even Corruptors are close to Sentinel MB.

 

Same with TK Blast. The Blasters version is a lot more damage.

 

MB on Sentinel's is going to be skipped and a waste even being there.

 

Storm Blast Sentinel vs Blaster is much better. No weirdness there.

 

Gloom on Sentinels compared to the others is bad also. The activation time is much high on Sentinel's. Why?

 

Even Fire Blast is very comparable with Blaster FB so why these other big differences?

 

Something is off with some of these powers and they don't add up. Clarification please.

Edited April 20, 2023 by Gobbledigook

[WindDemon21]

16 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

Latest patch should add a compromise for this. See patch notes.

Can we still please get the chem ammo suppressive attack to the same damage. Especially when the ice one instantly holds a boss even if it doens't last as long, thats' usually the reason why you need to stack it anyway.

[Mezmera]

20 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

Can we still please get the chem ammo suppressive attack to the same damage. Especially when the ice one instantly holds a boss even if it doens't last as long, thats' usually the reason why you need to stack it anyway.

 

It looks like they want this to take advantage of the ammo types to differing effect.  You want damage and some control use incendiary rounds.  You want instant control use cryo and for longer more impactful control use chem rounds.  Or you have good old standard ammo.  There'd be no reason to switch off of chem ammo with most things being equal.  

[FutureTails21]

Probably not the best place to post this, but I was hoping that Energy Blast gets a rework in some way. Maybe give it the Energy Storage buff like Energy Melee and Energy Assault does