Storm! What a blast!

[Zect]

Brief post since I haven't had much time for coh lately, but I'm completely blown away by storm blast!

 

Blast sets have been a stale, uninspiring affair for many years: sure, there are 2ndary effects and differences in DPA and proccability, but in general these superficial differences do not lend themselves to materially different strategies. Essentially, if you've played one blast set you've played between half and two-thirds of them.

 

Storm Blast, however, is centered on a completely different paradigm of encouraging the player to fight within areas of tactical advantage - storm cells and category 5, rewarding the strategically minded hero. To top it off, we're seeing mechanics that have been de-emphasized or homogenized out of existence elsewhere, such as repel (the real thing, not reverse-repel). This is precisely the breath of fresh air we need - I didn't expect this dev team was capable of such creativity given how by-the-book seismic blast was, but this time they've certainly displayed what they're really capable of.

 

Storm blast is an exceptionally powerful set that delivers formidable debuffing and soft control capacity, while not slouching at all on the dps front. It's clearly designed for a different paradigm than the current meta (speedkill/mass-aoe), which is exactly what Homecoming team must do: supporting and encouraging alternative playstyles to the dominant meta, whatever that might be, so as to develop a vibrant, diverse metagame. Bravo, bravissimo!

P.S. A brief glance at beta forums tells me that one of the early changes was to replace AR's beanbag with aim, which would be a hugely negative change - further reinforcing the oppressive aim/BU/nuke meta. The fact that this change was walked back really tells me that Homecoming team does take feedback into account: listening to players when valid (maintaining AR's traditional identity as a low-burst dps, high sustained dps set), while rightfully dismissing knee-jerk/munchkin suggestions (storm blast's damage is "too low").

 

[BazookaTwo]

You're being way too hard on Siesmic. I like Storm Blast too, but Siesmic is its own wonderful thing. I'm sure people are going to moan about people refusing to slot Sudden Acceleration in Jet Stream. Jet stream is like Gale but smarter (and yes I skipped Gust, cause I'm not ridiculous)

[Captain Fabulous]

9 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

You're being way too hard on Siesmic. I like Storm Blast too, but Siesmic is its own wonderful thing. I'm sure people are going to moan about people refusing to slot Sudden Acceleration in Jet Stream. Jet stream is like Gale but smarter (and yes I skipped Gust, cause I'm not ridiculous)

Gust is great for knocking fliers out of the sky.

[Ston]

14 hours ago, Zect said:

Brief post since I haven't had much time for coh lately, but I'm completely blown away by storm blast!

 

Blast sets have been a stale, uninspiring affair for many years: sure, there are 2ndary effects and differences in DPA and proccability, but in general these superficial differences do not lend themselves to materially different strategies. Essentially, if you've played one blast set you've played between half and two-thirds of them.

 

Storm Blast, however, is centered on a completely different paradigm of encouraging the player to fight within areas of tactical advantage - storm cells and category 5, rewarding the strategically minded hero. To top it off, we're seeing mechanics that have been de-emphasized or homogenized out of existence elsewhere, such as repel (the real thing, not reverse-repel). This is precisely the breath of fresh air we need - I didn't expect this dev team was capable of such creativity given how by-the-book seismic blast was, but this time they've certainly displayed what they're really capable of.

 

Storm blast is an exceptionally powerful set that delivers formidable debuffing and soft control capacity, while not slouching at all on the dps front. It's clearly designed for a different paradigm than the current meta (speedkill/mass-aoe), which is exactly what Homecoming team must do: supporting and encouraging alternative playstyles to the dominant meta, whatever that might be, so as to develop a vibrant, diverse metagame. Bravo, bravissimo!

P.S. A brief glance at beta forums tells me that one of the early changes was to replace AR's beanbag with aim, which would be a hugely negative change - further reinforcing the oppressive aim/BU/nuke meta. The fact that this change was walked back really tells me that Homecoming team does take feedback into account: listening to players when valid (maintaining AR's traditional identity as a low-burst dps, high sustained dps set), while rightfully dismissing knee-jerk/munchkin suggestions (storm blast's damage is "too low").

 

 

Assault Rifle was never a “high sustained dps set”. Would love to see any data that supports that. Also kind of ironic you like the AR changes yet dislike the meta.. AR is now the best set at clearing groups of enemies. The ST DPS is pretty average, but BU/Full Auto/Flamethrower/Buckshot will melt things faster than anything else. Full Auto alone will kill pretty much anything but bosses and can be used over twice as often as Inferno. The tradeoff for that before was that it had a narrow cone and you needed precise positioning. Now, just stand in front of a group of enemies and you’ll probably hit all of them.

 

Beanbag will forever be a Homecoming meme now. At least they gave it more damage.. but Aim would’ve been better in pretty much any scenario. 

Edited April 27, 2023 by Ston

[FupDup]

1 hour ago, Ston said:

Beanbag will forever be a Homecoming meme now. At least they gave it more damage.. but Aim would’ve been better in pretty much any scenario. 

Apparently Bean actually has slightly higher DPA than Burst now, so if people do still use it they're doing so because they want more DPA (aka more killing), not because they adhere to the OP's idea of "shaking up the meta" or whatever. 

 

Also I don't know why this thread is in the suggestions section, it probably belongs in general discussion. 

Edited April 27, 2023 by FupDup

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, FupDup said:

Also I don't know why this thread is in the suggestions section, it probably belongs in general discussion. 

Because it is feedback on the new power set. And this is the Suggestions and Feedback area of the forums.

 

Edit: Also, as for Beanbag, if people do still use it, then it is because they were already using it and find it useful. You don't get to claim that the reason someone is using something changed just because it got improved. Now if others decide they suddenly like Beanbag and start using it after calling it worthless all this time? Then yeah, they are probably using it for the damage. That doesn't mean from now on everyone that takes it is doing so for the damage, just that most likely most of them are.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Rudra

[Yaliw]

Memebag will live on in infamy.

[Rudra]

8 hours ago, Ston said:

 

Assault Rifle was never a “high sustained dps set”. Would love to see any data that supports that. Also kind of ironic you like the AR changes yet dislike the meta.. AR is now the best set at clearing groups of enemies. The ST DPS is pretty average, but BU/Full Auto/Flamethrower/Buckshot will melt things faster than anything else. Full Auto alone will kill pretty much anything but bosses and can be used over twice as often as Inferno. The tradeoff for that before was that it had a narrow cone and you needed precise positioning. Now, just stand in front of a group of enemies and you’ll probably hit all of them.

 

Beanbag will forever be a Homecoming meme now. At least they gave it more damage.. but Aim would’ve been better in pretty much any scenario. 

Not all Blaster secondaries get some version of Build Up. Darkness Manipulation, Ninja Training, and Plant Manipulation all lack a version of Build Up. So your comment that Assault Rifle is now the best at clearing groups of enemies is wrong if you are tying it to using Build Up prior to using your nuke followed by quick AoE followup attacks. And since Full Auto, Flamethrower, and Buckshot didn't get any damage increase in the last patch, then the statement applied to even before the patch. Full Auto only had its cone widened. Flamethrower had its DoT duration reduced, but maintained damage. Buckshot wasn't even touched. So you are saying that AR was always the best at clearing groups of enemies. (Edit: Full Auto having a wider cone just makes it easier to catch everything you are trying to.)

Edited April 27, 2023 by Rudra

[Ston]

27 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Not all Blaster secondaries get some version of Build Up. Darkness Manipulation, Ninja Training, and Plant Manipulation all lack a version of Build Up. So your comment that Assault Rifle is now the best at clearing groups of enemies is wrong if you are tying it to using Build Up prior to using your nuke followed by quick AoE followup attacks. And since Full Auto, Flamethrower, and Buckshot didn't get any damage increase in the last patch, then the statement applied to even before the patch. Full Auto only had its cone widened. Flamethrower had its DoT duration reduced, but maintained damage. Buckshot wasn't even touched. So you are saying that AR was always the best at clearing groups of enemies. (Edit: Full Auto having a wider cone just makes it easier to catch everything you are trying to.)

 

Toxins gives you extra proc damage which is usually better than BU. And it can proc Gaussian's, so I'll count it. I'll give you Darkness & Ninja, though. But both of those would be very poor pairings with AR since they want to be in melee range basically the whole fight. So you're gimping yourself by using them anyway.

And no, the statement didn't apply before the patch. I wouldn't downplay the Flamethrower buff, the projectile speed means more DPS. And you must've not done much testing with Full Auto before & after the patch. It is insanely easier to hit a full group of enemies now. You have to spend less time positioning yourself which means more DPS. Myself and others have been getting trapdoor test results using AR/TA that compete with Fire/Fire at around 3:30. Neither AR or TA would have dreamed of competing with Fire/Fire before these changes. (Yes, I know Trapdoor isn't the gold standard for testing. But I've also been clearing the Battle Maiden farm easier & faster than ever with the new AR. It's excellent on any map and against any enemies now).

[Rudra]

44 minutes ago, Ston said:

And you must've not done much testing with Full Auto before & after the patch. It is insanely easier to hit a full group of enemies now.

And from 18 minutes prior to your response:

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

(Edit: Full Auto having a wider cone just makes it easier to catch everything you are trying to.)

(Edit: It's even in your quote of my post.)

 

 

44 minutes ago, Ston said:

I wouldn't downplay the Flamethrower buff, the projectile speed means more DPS.

Let's see....

Recharge 20 seconds. Didn't change. Cast time 2.33 seconds. Didn't Change. DoT duration reduced to 4.7 seconds from 7.1 seconds. So lets check that DPS. 121.119 damage usable every 20 seconds is 6.05595 damage per second. Original Flamethrower at 121.119 damage usable every 20 seconds is 6.05595 damage per second. The damage accrues over 2.4 less seconds of DoT now, but the attack's DPS didn't change. At all. It's just more front-loaded now.

 

44 minutes ago, Ston said:

You have to spend less time positioning yourself which means more DPS.

Just how much time were you spending trying to position yourself to hit a group of mobs with Full Auto before?! It never took me longer than a click.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Rudra

[Ston]

42 minutes ago, Rudra said:

The damage accrues over 2.4 less seconds of DoT now, but the attack's DPS didn't change. At all.

 

Thanks for quoting your own post, I did read it. But I can’t tell from that statement whether or not you think the new Full Auto is a big performance difference. Easier doesn’t always mean better. 

 

I think you’re undervaluing the change here. It’s the same damage per activation. But that is not the same as damage per second in actual gameplay. It’s very noticeable how much faster the damage is applied now, especially if you use it from max range. Your math doesn’t include distance or projectile speed. And in a game where things die in seconds, those are pretty important. 

 

And I could be biased because I do a lot of solo’ing at x8, but it’s been a lot easier for me now to hit full groups of enemies. Before, I’d usually have to back up, hover, jump, teleport, etc to get a majority of enemies in the arc. Most of the time if I was standing in front of a group, I’d be too close and would probably miss half the enemies. This is especially true on indoor maps. That’s not the case now. You can basically hit them all from only a few feet away. 

[Rudra]

I don't solo at x8 on anything other than my Brutes*, so I have no solo play reference for your experience to compare notes with. I know when solo and I open with Full Auto on mobs, I never have any problem quickly hitting everything in the spawn even at x4. And when on a team at x8, I still never had any issues with being out of position to hit everything in the group. However, I am aware that sometimes it can be tedious or impossible if the group is spread out. Also, it can be tedious to quickly target a central mob to anchor Full Auto's attack with depending on mob placement. And the wider cone helps with those since it gives more room for error. That didn't change the attack's DPS though.

 

As for Flamethrower having higher DPS, it really, really, doesn't. It looks and feels like it does, but it doesn't. My current Assault Rifle Blaster does not have Flamethrower, but I was led to believe the damage is applied when you use the attack instead of waiting a half second for some unknown reason to apply the damage now. Not having that pause before the damage is applied is not the same thing as a faster projectile. The cast time and animation time are unchanged. (Edit: So the projectile still hits at the same time as before, but that nonsensical pause in damage application would be gone instead.) The same amount of damage is being applied to the target. The same period of downtime before the power can be used again is still in effect. There is no increase in DPS. What the shorter duration at equal damage did was make it more likely that all the damage, or at least more of the damage, is applied to the target before the target dies from your other attacks or your teammates. The math doesn't lie. The DPS didn't change. It's how quickly that damage is applied that changed. (Edit: For clarification, yes, targets die faster from the attack, but that is not due to a change in DPS. It is due to a change in rate of damage application.)

 

*- Edit: I have no Tanker characters I use for play. I have 2 of them for base building, they are only level 4 and will always be level 4 since that is as high as they need to be to get Hover so making bases is easier. The only Tanker character I ever made that I enjoyed I have not brought back yet. (The focus on armor instead of attacks at low levels turns me off from Tankers. Things can't hurt me if they're dead.)

Edited April 28, 2023 by Rudra

[Wavicle]

You guys are using DPS to mean two different things.

Flamethrower now does it's full damage in little more than 4 seconds instead of 7. That's faster "damage per second" for those few seconds.

But what DPS generally means in games of this kind (leaving aside the "DPA" and "DPS" nonsense in the info screens in CoH) is how much damage your character does Per Second of Animation.

By THAT measure Flamethrower has not changed.

So in a long fight, FT is doing no different from before, but in short fights (most fights in CoH), it deals its damage in a much shorter period of time.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Wavicle

[Zect]

On 4/27/2023 at 9:57 PM, Ston said:

Assault Rifle was never a “high sustained dps set”. Would love to see any data that supports that. Also kind of ironic you like the AR changes yet dislike the meta.. AR is now the best set at clearing groups of enemies. The ST DPS is pretty average, but BU/Full Auto/Flamethrower/Buckshot will melt things faster than anything else. Full Auto alone will kill pretty much anything but bosses and can be used over twice as often as Inferno. The tradeoff for that before was that it had a narrow cone and you needed precise positioning. Now, just stand in front of a group of enemies and you’ll probably hit all of them.

 

Beanbag will forever be a Homecoming meme now. At least they gave it more damage.. but Aim would’ve been better in pretty much any scenario. 

 

I should have specified high sustained aoe dps. All the way back in issue 1, AR was the only set with a crashless nuke. All of AR's aoe's also do more damage than the design formulas specify, e.g. Buckshot "should" do 47.499 damage on a blaster, but actual damage is 56.931 - a differential of +19.857%. 

 

So from the start, AR offered a different strategy. Instead of one extremely powerful broadside of damage (classic nuke), it had multiple powerful aoes that could be chained one after another for a withering barrage of fire. Thematic, effective, different. Since then, crashless nukes have proliferated, and AR's identity as the sustained aoe dps set has been eroded. Giving it aim would've been the final nail in the coffin. Fortunately, since AR is now "the best set at clearing groups of enemies" as you claim (and I'm not disagreeing, mind), it is in no need of aim. Whew!

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by Zect

[Zect]

On 4/27/2023 at 7:37 AM, BazookaTwo said:

You're being way too hard on Siesmic. I like Storm Blast too, but Siesmic is its own wonderful thing. I'm sure people are going to moan about people refusing to slot Sudden Acceleration in Jet Stream. Jet stream is like Gale but smarter (and yes I skipped Gust, cause I'm not ridiculous)

 

I think there is nothing bad about seismic (mechanically or conceptually): it's just rather conformal, very by-the-book. It's the kind of set I could design. While not every set needs to be wildly different, I do think creations such as storm blast are the ones that truly show the creators' mettle as designers.

 

 

[Gamegod]

You guys are all idiots arguing over dumb stuff in a video game its hilarious. You should just be happy to have COH back to play at all.

[Troo]

31 minutes ago, Gamegod said:

You guys We are all idiots arguing over dumb stuff in a video game, its hilarious. You should I am just be happy to have COH back to play at all.

 

fixed it for you

[Rudra]

44 minutes ago, Gamegod said:

You guys are all idiots arguing over dumb stuff in a video game its hilarious. You should just be happy to have COH back to play at all.

Welcome to the Suggestions and Feedback forum where people come up with ideas to implement in the game that may not sit well with others. That sort of thing happens in  situations where a group of people get together to discuss anything, let alone where they pitch ideas back and forth to improve something as complicated as this game by fixing extant things already in the game or adding new things to grow the game. Isn't that why you made a forum account too?

[FupDup]

1 hour ago, Gamegod said:

You guys are all idiots arguing over dumb stuff in a video game its hilarious. You should just be happy to have COH back to play at all.

One does not preclude the other. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by FupDup

[ninja surprise]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Welcome to the Suggestions and Feedback forum where people come up with ideas to implement in the game that may not sit well with others. That sort of thing happens in  situations where a group of people get together to discuss anything, let alone where they pitch ideas back and forth to improve something as complicated as this game by fixing extant things already in the game or adding new things to grow the game. Isn't that why you made a forum account too?

 

Or in this case, OP gave feedback on how much he loves Storm and then everyone ignored that in order to argue about Assault Rifle. 🙄

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, ninja surprise said:

 

Or in this case, OP gave feedback on how much he loves Storm and then everyone ignored that in order to argue about Assault Rifle. 🙄

That too. Humans are prone to going off on tangents. Which reminds me.... 😛

[Mjolnerd]

3 hours ago, Gamegod said:

You guys are all idiots arguing over dumb stuff in a video game its hilarious. You should just be happy to have COH back to play at all.

 

Well, everybody, this guy definitely seems like someone whose opinions we should give a damn about.

[AxerJ]

Great post, Zect! I agree with everything you've said. The only thing I feel is that the activation time of Storm Cell is a little too long. Do you think SC should activate more quickly? Considering how important it is. I think a faster activation would smooth out Storm Blast to perfection.

Edited May 1, 2023 by AxerJ

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, AxerJ said:

Great post, Zect! I agree with everything you've said. The only thing I feel is that the activation time of Storm Cell is a little too long. Do you think SC should activate more quickly? Considering how important it is. I think a faster activation would smooth out Storm Blast to perfection.

You already created a thread about this. 2 hours before you posted this comment. Mind if I ask why you are addressing this in two threads concurrently?

[DrunkFlux]

I think storms biggest problem is while it has high over time and sustained damage but it's DPA INITIATIVE is very, very bad.  In fact, it's the worst in the game I've ever seen, a complete opposite of my usual playstyle of "Full spearhead, hit hard, fast and first".  And I favor reliability, all of my builds are made with that in mind, otherwise I feel kinda useless.

Simply, many mobs will be dead before you land anything due to all that time in trying to open up.

 

Solo though, I decided while teaming just now to rush a team by myself after quaffing a purple and having farsight active and times juncture active.  I was able to slaughter it no problem as the AoE sustain and consistency in hitting hard AND hitting more than one enemy at a time at all times was very effective.  It just seems to as a set over-focus on that mechanic.