Focused Feedback: Various Power Updates

[FupDup]

In regards to Elec Melee's AOE, perhaps it's about time we looked at some of the crappier powers in the set. Like Jacob's Ladder being an absolute meme with a narrow melee cone that makes it awkward to use when you're deep in melee. A wider cone angle or maybe even turning it into a short-ranged targeted AOE could make it more compatible with melee play (50 degrees would be great as a ranged cone in a ranged set, but not for a pure melee set).

 

Lightning Clap is another candidate for adjustments, perhaps giving it some actual base damage. Of course all of this would need to occur in a future page because we're getting very close to release for this page and it's already quite large. 

Edited February 17 by FupDup

[ScarySai]

Looks like I'll have to test and see how much those storm blast changes matter.

 

I'll be rather upset if these ultra last second changes kill the hype I had for storm this patch. Those phases of having ten bolts hit everything felt awesome, and not really gamebreaking. 

 

Shall report back in the afternoon.

Edited February 17 by ScarySai

[ScarySai]

STORM BLAST FEEDBACK, BASED ON FEB 17 PATCH

 

I couldn't wait, I decided to test it during lunch.

 

While an upgrade from live still, every time storm cell bugs out, the thought is the same: Lightning spam is cool, and feels really good. Makes cell actually feel like an impactful power. So to find that the reason cell felt good for the entire beta cycle was not because of the other changes, but because of a bug, is a bit annoying.

 

On paper, the cell procs getting a different scale might make it more consistent, but in practice, makes it feel useless yet again, especially when you pair it off with the fact they upped the delay again.

 

Suggestions:

Storm Cell: Find a way to make Cell lightning more spammy, it feels like ass now, it felt great up until this point, apparently due to a bug, yet again.

Bring the cell cooldown on the same target back to 1s.

 

There shouldn't be a fear of overperformance, if I build the exact same corruptor, but ice or fire, Rain of fire and rain of ice can practically solo entire packs by themselves, Cell can't do that even with godly RNG.

 

I'd have a more iterative approach in my suggestions usually, like starting off by bringing the delay back to 1s again, but yall sure picked a rather inconvenient time to drop this on us with the patch around the corner, so more stuff needs to be done at once. Storm cell once again feels like the worst power in the set that it's based entirely around, when it felt good up until now from early closed testing of this patch.

 

 

 

 

 

Watch this clip of my storm/storm and tell me that lightning spam isn't infinite cooler than what this 'fix' reduced it to.

 

TLDR: Make storm cell spammy again, every time it has bugged out to zap people more often than intended, it feels way better. At this point, that should just be how it works, and be tuned around that behavior.

Edited February 17 by ScarySai

[High_Beam]

Storm Blast.  I have enjoyed the power set from the jump.  I have never found it underwhelming, or not fun and never had a problem working most enemies off; once you stopped theorycrafting the numbers and instead learned the mechanics and played it . . . barrels of fun.  The changes just make it even better, I have a Storm/Atom Blaster and it felt stronger but where it realy seemed to show improvement in feel, flow and fatality (the enemy not me) was on my Storm/Storm Corruptor.

 

This is a classic example of letting the set play out for a bit to breath and identify the real problem children in the power then fix.  This practice should be aplied to the impending Arsenal Control.

 

Bravo Zulu!

[Player-1]

29 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

STORM BLAST FEEDBACK, BASED ON FEB 17 PATCH

 

I couldn't wait, I decided to test it during lunch.

 

While an upgrade from live still, every time storm cell bugs out, the thought is the same: Lightning spam is cool, and feels really good. Makes cell actually feel like an impactful power. So to find that the reason cell felt good for the entire beta cycle was not because of the other changes, but because of a bug, is a bit annoying.

 

On paper, the cell procs getting a different scale might make it more consistent, but in practice, makes it feel useless yet again, especially when you pair it off with the fact they upped the delay again.

 

Suggestions:

Storm Cell: Find a way to make Cell lightning more spammy, it feels like ass now, it felt great up until this point, apparently due to a bug, yet again.

Bring the cell cooldown on the same target back to 1s.

 

There shouldn't be a fear of overperformance, if I build the exact same corruptor, but ice or fire, Rain of fire and rain of ice can practically solo entire packs by themselves, Cell can't do that even with godly RNG.

 

I'd have a more iterative approach in my suggestions usually, like starting off by bringing the delay back to 1s again, but yall sure picked a rather inconvenient time to drop this on us with the patch around the corner, so more stuff needs to be done at once. Storm cell once again feels like the worst power in the set that it's based entirely around, when it felt good up until now from early closed testing of this patch.

 

 

 

 

 

Watch this clip of my storm/storm and tell me that lightning spam isn't infinite cooler than what this 'fix' reduced it to.

 

Unfortunately due to a bug introduced in Beta, Direct Strike would have been giving Storm Cell, Category Five, Tornado, Sleet, Lightning Storm, and yourself the Lightning procs and over-saturate the amount of intended strikes. This was caught only recently and thus the re-review of the lightning procs.

[ScarySai]

4 hours ago, Player-1 said:

 

Unfortunately due to a bug introduced in Beta, Direct Strike would have been giving Storm Cell, Category Five, Tornado, Sleet, Lightning Storm, and yourself the Lightning procs and over-saturate the amount of intended strikes. This was caught only recently and thus the re-review of the lightning procs.

I caught that already.

 

At this point, Cell needs to be spammy as a baseline, and be tuned around that, rather than the way it currently is.

 

Whether intended or not, this fix makes the set feel worse, and every time cell has been broken to cast lightning more often, it always felt better than it's 'intended' functionality. I don't see why storm cell should feel so weak when something like rain of fire can clear 80% of a pack by itself. Indirectly, the bug made cell feel like a power choice worth a damn. I was very excited for beta storm cell up until this point, I love this set, but cell feels awful once again.

Edited February 17 by ScarySai

[AmrasNotHere]

Storm most definitely felt like you were actually......causing a real storm..... with the bug in place. I've had issues with the set before this bug occurred and it actually made me want to play a storm through the content instead of abandoning it when it was nice and spammy. After the fix, it feels lackluster all over again. Hopefully the power team can take this into consideration to up the ante and see where it stands. There's certainly not a clock ticking down to rush this page out anyway. 

 

Edit: I realize that this bug was specifically on the beta to begin with, but it turned out to be the key component that the set was missing from its miserable state on live. Just felt I should clarify.

The concept of the set is awesome but the current execution has been mid at best.

Edited February 17 by AmrasNotHere
Clarity

[PyroBeetle]

I copied my Storm Sent onto Brainstorm, basically the set as it is in Build 3, reverted from Build 2, makes it so the intended buffs are just non-existent. The set will remain mediocre and I will have to reshelve my Storm Sentinel again, after looking forward to taking him off the shelf. I understand it might have been a bug, but the one second cooldown on the lightning made it feel powerful, which is a decent tradeoff for the 5 to 6 second setup.

[Videra]

1 hour ago, Player-1 said:

 

Unfortunately due to a bug introduced in Beta, Direct Strike would have been giving Storm Cell, Category Five, Tornado, Sleet, Lightning Storm, and yourself the Lightning procs and over-saturate the amount of intended strikes. This was caught only recently and thus the re-review of the lightning procs.

 

I'd like to throw my hat into the ring too and say that this bug-fix feels pretty bad. One of the big reasons I haven't dedicated to a Storm Blast character is because Storm Cell - which feels as if it's meant to be the marquee power - feels lame.

With that in mind, I'd like to politely ask you to reconsider this course of action. Perhaps there's a way you can make Sai's demonstration of the bug in question an intended part of Storm's functionality?

[Super Atom]

This really does feel like a "the bug was better" situation. Unintentionally made storm feel great, maybe its time to make it intentional?

[Shin Magmus]

You should probably listen to the community this time and revert this to make Storm Blast feel anywhere near decent.  It's pretty sad that the intent is to "bugfix" another Homecoming new powerset into such a sad state that multiple players here just drop their characters with it.  Not even adding Beanbag to Storm Blast would make me want to play it now.

[Uun]

Copied my lvl 34 Storm/Storm corruptor to beta. I haven't tested any of the previous iterations of Storm Blast in Page 7, so RC3 is the first I'm trying. The new version of Storm Cell is a marked improvement to the version on live. I would like a better visual indication of the effect radius - I find it pretty hard to see.

 

I'm not sold on the changes to Chain Lightning. Foes now have to be really close to the target to receive chain damage and the damage feels pretty lackluster. I think the radius should be returned to 15ft (at least). The power I would use as a model is Martial Assault/Trick Shot. That chains really well. I wouldn't object to the Chain Lightning target cap being reduced if it meant we could get some real damage on targets it hits.

[WindDemon21]

Regarding the proc rates, the 100% proc rate on all attacks should be the baseline which is a bit of what the last few posts have been saying truly. Before this beta patch, I already calculated that the power was doing a lot less damage than a standard rain power until there were about 2 enemies left. Now it might be bumped to 3 from what I tested, but that was also already assuming a 100% proc rate, using the fastest attacks in the set as well, (ie using gust as much as possible to proc cell in the calculation)

 

In real fights, the procs will hit minnions that it doesn't need to since regular aoes will end up killing them ie wasted, or even when the mob is low, will hit the target you're already going to kill with your direct strike/cloud burst etc, so that proc damage is wasted as well versus rains which are still hitting all other targets.

 

What 100% proc rate with more strikes going out will allow for that proc damage to average out better (and be visually awesome), even if the damage had to be lowered to compensate (though which isn't currently the case)

 

I think while it's nice and I do like the mitigation from them, there are also major disadvantages to storm blast, cell, and c5 that other sets don't deal with (cell being needed for the other powers to have secondary effects, the end cost on cell, it doing nothing if you don't use your storm powers and try to use your other powers, the damage being low until the fight drags out, no way to nuke/start the alpha strike consistently enough if the mob requires it before you're attacked/mezzed so you can't get the procs out etc), fyi they get noticed if you try to start with jet stream and attack/mez/kill you so you can't get more attacks out after if you try to start with that), so their advantages should even out with the downsides, rather than under-powering on both sides.

 

I think we should baseline the attacks to 100% rate, reduce chain to 12end/rech, and then balance cell around there, though I feel that would be pretty much where the balance would be at that point.

 

Then regarding intensify, it still just seems out of place as a 90s click power, obviously the benefit of the extra procs would have no point, so still see the power becoming an auto or more rage-like perm-able power.

[Draeth Darkstar]

9 hours ago, Player-1 said:

 

Unfortunately due to a bug introduced in Beta, Direct Strike would have been giving Storm Cell, Category Five, Tornado, Sleet, Lightning Storm, and yourself the Lightning procs and over-saturate the amount of intended strikes. This was caught only recently and thus the re-review of the lightning procs.

It does seem like a... strange... choice to fix the bug that was causing a bunch of extra Lightning procs to occur, and not give us at least one build to see the results of that bug fix in action before also doubling the delay on Lightning attacks, too.

Edited February 18 by Draeth Darkstar

[Player-1]

To clarify, the bug only affected Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors due to the Fast Snipe version of Direct Strike being able to provide the Storm Cell Lightning to yourself and all viable pets. Sentinels did not experience this particular bug.

 

This alone meant you could possibly get triple the lightning between Storm Cell, Category Five, and yourself. But with every pet or pseudopet created you would get that many more procs which would be problematic for various reasons.

[PyroBeetle]

3 hours ago, Player-1 said:

To clarify, the bug only affected Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors due to the Fast Snipe version of Direct Strike being able to provide the Storm Cell Lightning to yourself and all viable pets. Sentinels did not experience this particular bug.

 

This alone meant you could possibly get triple the lightning between Storm Cell, Category Five, and yourself. But with every pet or pseudopet created you would get that many more procs which would be problematic for various reasons.

 

To be clear, I was not responding to the bug fix either, I am more worried about the increase in the lockout and the reduction in damage for the lightning procs. Without the changes, which made the set perform much better than the bottom tier set that it was without comparing to Inferno still, you will end up with Storm in the same place it was before...shelved for a vast majority of people. There has to be a tradeoff in effectiveness for the set-up time required to play the set, and the way that it is currently constituted, the value for the set-up time is not there. The changes that you rolled back helped to fix this.

[Super Atom]

6 hours ago, Player-1 said:

This alone meant you could possibly get triple the lightning between Storm Cell, Category Five, and yourself. But with every pet or pseudopet created you would get that many more procs which would be problematic for various reasons.

 

This gives us nothing to work with. It wasn't problematic when it was happening, it just felt good. If you could please explain those reasons that would be great, perhaps there is something people didn't take into account?

[Player-1]

15 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

This gives us nothing to work with. It wasn't problematic when it was happening, it just felt good. If you could please explain those reasons that would be great, perhaps there is something people didn't take into account?

 

The key factor is that it granted lightning to any pet you have summoned. This means any temp power that is a pet, any vanity pet, lore pet, pseudo pet like trip mines or really all of the Traps powerset. This leads to a huge imbalance based on powerset combination and beyond. 

[Super Atom]

23 minutes ago, Player-1 said:

 

The key factor is that it granted lightning to any pet you have summoned. This means any temp power that is a pet, any vanity pet, lore pet, pseudo pet like trip mines or really all of the Traps powerset. This leads to a huge imbalance based on powerset combination and beyond. 

Ohhh... oh OK fair. 👌  my testing was done on a storm energy blaster so I wouldn't have seen this. Means the difference I'm noticing is entirely in the delay changes and not so much the proc, that said that small delay change is no bueno.

Edited February 18 by Super Atom

[ScarySai]

8 hours ago, Player-1 said:

To clarify, the bug only affected Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors due to the Fast Snipe version of Direct Strike being able to provide the Storm Cell Lightning to yourself and all viable pets. Sentinels did not experience this particular bug.

 

This alone meant you could possibly get triple the lightning between Storm Cell, Category Five, and yourself. But with every pet or pseudopet created you would get that many more procs which would be problematic for various reasons.

 

I'm aware, but once again, Storm Cell feels better when it's spammy with the lightning procs, and should be rebalanced to behave as such, as it's a terrible power whenever it's not bugged to shoot more often - and as we've seen many times now, is much more well received.

Edited February 18 by ScarySai

[Frostmoon]

Would it be possible to make Storm Cell more spammy without it granting all pets lightning abilities? I think that would recitify the complaints here.

[ScarySai]

Yeah, nobody is saying you have to leave the bug in, but this is a very core issue with cell that the bug did indirectly address.

 

Reducing cell's frequency and potency on the same target while also fixing said bug is kind of an L, though now it's clear the former isn't meaningful by itself.

Edited February 18 by ScarySai

[AmrasNotHere]

6 hours ago, Player-1 said:

 

The key factor is that it granted lightning to any pet you have summoned. This means any temp power that is a pet, any vanity pet, lore pet, pseudo pet like trip mines or really all of the Traps powerset. This leads to a huge imbalance based on powerset combination and beyond. 

 

With that in mind, I still believe that there should be some kind of approach to bring this set up to the performance level we were seeing with it bugged. Fixing the bug, and then taking an additional step back, was a very noticeable in the decline of a power set that is already struggling to keep appeal outside of theme. 

 

We aren't requesting that you leave the bug, we are requesting that you improve the set somehow. Preferably with making storm cell spammy.

 

In regards to your concern to imbalance, combinations of power sets on individual ATs are not and have never been balanced based on choice of combo. This concern will vastly limit the ability to bring "balance" to sets in the future. I would provide examples but fear that if I highlight these points they too will be toned down outside of their current synergy. 

What a time to fear nerfs in a game that isn't monetized and is played primarily to have fun and create bonds within its community.

 

[ScarySai]

It's disheartening to learn that the high praise I had for the slight changes to the set in this patch, actually had nothing to do with the intentional changes to the set, lol.

[Player-1]

This bug went well beyond powerful synergy between a primary and secondary once we dived into it. Again, this allowed lightning to be cast off of all pets you had summoned which unfortunately varies so wildly depending on the character that we could not rely on the feedback from before this fix due to the difference in pets between characters.

 

With the current changes, we are doing much more thorough testing to get this to a place that is both effective and fun.