What I wish Seismic Blast looked like (A diamond in the rough)

[Bionic_Flea]

I never liked the "must be on the ground" powers but Seismic makes less sense than usual.  Blasters and other squishies use fly much more often then melee characters because staying out of melee range is almost standard survival technique. 

[Lunar Ronin]

44 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I never liked the "must be on the ground" powers but Seismic makes less sense than usual.  Blasters and other squishies use fly much more often then melee characters because staying out of melee range is almost standard survival technique. 

 

Yep.  "Must be on the ground" is why I will never play Seismic Blast and gave up on Electrical Armor.  But that's okay, that just means that they are not for me.  There are power sets that are for me but not for others, like Storm Blast.

[FupDup]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I never liked the "must be on the ground" powers but Seismic makes less sense than usual.  Blasters and other squishies use fly much more often then melee characters because staying out of melee range is almost standard survival technique. 

While I agree with that sentiment in general, Seismic Blast does have a PBAOE knockdown aura that incentivizes melee play (not to mention most Blaster secondaries, Sentinel ancillaries). Playing the set at range would have a little anti-synergy even with the grounding requirement removed. 

[Shin Magmus]

21 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Yep.  "Must be on the ground" is why I will never play Seismic Blast and gave up on Electrical Armor.  But that's okay, that just means that they are not for me.  There are power sets that are for me but not for others, like Storm Blast.

     This is yet another "weakness" of Seismic Blast.  This entire thread; my entire point, is predicated on the fundamental common sense argument that powers with extra weaknesses deserve equivalent extra strengths to be worth consideration in this game.  Seismic Blast as a whole, and Meteor in particular, underperform for no reason while having a bad damage type and unique weaknesses relative to every other Blast Powerset in the game. 

 

It's not logical, and it's not fun. 

[Shin Magmus]

17 hours ago, FupDup said:

While I agree with that sentiment in general, Seismic Blast does have a PBAOE knockdown aura that incentivizes melee play (not to mention most Blaster secondaries, Sentinel ancillaries). Playing the set at range would have a little anti-synergy even with the grounding requirement removed. 

     Did you watch my video proving how incredibly weak and borderline-useless that Knockdown aura truly is?  Anyone using any knock of any kind will suppress the effect of Seismic Shockwaves on that enemy for 10!!!!!!!! seconds.  You can perpetually Knockdown enemies with Upthrust at a frequency that makes Seismic Shockwaves literally do nothing.  It's in the original post. 

Edited May 15 by Shin Magmus
Clarification of info in the OP

[Herotu]

2 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

powers with extra weaknesses deserve equivalent extra strengths 

I think this justification should be applied more broadly throughout the game - imo it would encourage more interesting playstyles in a given Team.

[Shin Magmus]

@Player-1

 

     Here's an example video showcasing Meteor, when enhanced for KB (this is allowable by the game but hopefully uncommon, as it enables vicious trolling behavior) on the Moonfire TF.  Many cave tilesets have always had the potential for enemies to get "stuck" in the walls and ceiling after getting KB'd, but this video shows that Meteor really takes the cake.  Jump to 1:14 for the most disruptive "True Stuck" enemy who I can't hurt in any way, but watch the whole thing for stuck enemies left and right.  I tested the power without the KB enhancement and it's obviously still capable of producing these issues, but they're at least less common with lower magnitude KB.  I think that this video is a great demonstration overall.  This is why players feel forced to pay the slot tax on KBtoKD.

 

Edited May 20 by Shin Magmus

[AmrasNotHere]

This set needs raptor jesus

[Videra]

1 hour ago, Shin Magmus said:

@Player-1

 

     Here's an example video showcasing Meteor, when enhanced for KB (this is allowable by the game but hopefully uncommon, as it enables vicious trolling behavior) on the Moonfire TF.  Many cave tilesets have always had the potential for enemies to get "stuck" in the walls and ceiling after getting KB'd, but this video shows that Meteor really takes the cake.  Jump to 1:14 for the most disruptive "True Stuck" enemy who I can't hurt in any way, but watch the whole thing for stuck enemies left and right.  I tested the power without the KB enhancement and it's obvious still capable of producing these issues, but they're at least less common.  I think that this video is a better visual demonstration though.

 

 

You know, having never seen Meteor in the wild, I didn't realize that the KB was this bad.

[Herotu]

13 minutes ago, Videra said:

 

You know, having never seen Meteor in the wild, I didn't realize that the KB was this GODLIKE! I love it! ❤️❤️❤️

I fixed it for you.

[Videra]

22 minutes ago, Herotu said:

I fixed it for you.

 

There is no KB->KD in Ba Sing Se.

[Shin Magmus]

24 minutes ago, Herotu said:

I fixed it for you.

To be perfectly clear, if someone joined one of my TFs and spammed Meteor enhanced for KB (doing what is demonstrated in my video): I'd kick them immediately.  They can form their own TFs and lead their own content... and see how many players want to join and deal with... this.

Edited May 20 by Shin Magmus

[Herotu]

5 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

To be perfectly clear, if someone joined one of my TFs and spammed Meteor enhanced for KB (doing what is demonstrated in my video): I'd kick them immediately.  They can form their own TFs and lead their own content... and see how many players want to join and deal with... this.

If anybody kicked me from a TF, I'd immediately put them on my blacklist.

[Shin Magmus]

     Here's another video, showing my favorite testbed TF: the humble Penelope Yin TF, at +0 (typical speedrun for 20 merits).  You can see how the magnitude of the KB is even higher when enemies are only +0s or +1s, making TFs with any sort of conditional defeat all or defeat group triggers ripe for this type of trolling.  My first few Meteors are just wildly inconvenient and annoying, but my last one manages to lodge an enemy inside the Train Tracks (completely unexpected) and get another "true stuck" softlock; talk about trollish griefing!

 

[Player-1]

Hello @Shin Magmus,

 

Knockback into geometry is a global issue not specific to Meteor and Seismic Blast. Its something we are investigating based on maps.

 

Have you been able to gather more clear times between Seismic Blast and Psychic Blast?

[Shin Magmus]

1 hour ago, Player-1 said:

Hello @Shin Magmus,

 

Knockback into geometry is a global issue not specific to Meteor and Seismic Blast. Its something we are investigating based on maps.

 

Have you been able to gather more clear times between Seismic Blast and Psychic Blast?

I was waiting on a multi-enemy group simulator test arc that Ston is working on, to average powers and resistances from several groups at the same time.  I can test other stuff in the meantime I suppose, if you have an idea for something with less randomness than the office simulator AE arc.

[Player-1]

2 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

I was waiting on a multi-enemy group simulator test arc that Ston is working on, to average powers and resistances from several groups at the same time.  I can test other stuff in the meantime I suppose, if you have an idea for something with less randomness than the office simulator AE arc.

 

All missions, unless specifically created spawn to spawn, will have a degree of randomness. The best way to counteract it would be to have multiple results aggregated together as an average. @Ston has done this in their testing where they ran three melee archetypes through the Trapdoor mission multiple times to get averaged results. Not only due to enemy placement, but simple misses and proc activations can cause variance even in static encounters such as a Pylon defeat.

[Shin Magmus]

     For you @Player-1, I'm going to fill out a Google sheet of runs and just log every single completed run unless I make some sort of real mechanical error in my flowchart.  But I'm pretty diligent about running these mishes the same way every time.  For example, since Ston's map has a timer, I use all my buffs right before I talk to the NPC and then immediately jump in to the mish to remove those first few cast times from the run time of both characters.  I recorded my first runs (after practicing the mission to learn the enemy group) for both characters and uploaded them: but the Psy Blast character has a significant lead that's even more severe than I would've predicted.  Could be an abberration; I'll grind out 10 runs on each character tomorrow, and do good old averages.

 

 

Seismic Scrimblo:  7:11

 

 

Psychic Scrimblo  6:01

 

[Shin Magmus]

     @Player-1 Here is my data.  I have my own conclusions, but the only thing that truly surprised is how volatile a gimmick set like Seismic Blast is compared to a gimmick-less set like Psychic Blast.  Seismic Blast can't execute a planned attack chain or flowchart in the way that some other gimmick sets can (Energy Melee, Water Blast, Street Justice), because the chance to get Seismic Shockwaves is not consistent and because you don't have a tool to instantly grant it... such as Tidal Force or Build Momentum.  This appears in the data as Seismic Blast having over 2x the standard deviation of Psychic Blast: despite me building 2 near identical characters (as previously discussed).  I have to adapt more to "whatever happens" while playing Seismic, which does cost time both in terms of bad luck but also the player needing to mentally be reactive instead of predictive.  I think this also validates 2 of my suggested changes in my original post: which are both based around more uptime of Seismic Shockwaves (more consistency).

 

     The times from my previous videos are not in this table because I practiced the map more and play it better.  In my recorded runs I was fighting one spawn at a time, but in this data I began to pull stragglers forward with me and immediately use my powerful abilities (such as my Nukes), the second they were off cooldown: fighting 2 spawns at the same time.  This resulted in much faster times for both builds, practice makes perfect.

[Ston]

100% onboard with changes to Seismic Force and Meteor. If nothing else on Meteor can get changed, it really should have some kind of bonus damage/effect for the amount of time it takes to actually land. I don't think it should do the same damage as Thunderous Blast considering the timing involved (or even less damage when considering Shocked procs).

When I was doing Pylon testing, I always found it was very hard to keep track of when enhanced Stalagmite would be available. IMO, it's unintuitive to lose your enhanced abilities after clicking Seismic Force.. especially compared to the combo system on Water Blast. Think there's a lot room for improvement there.

 

Honestly I’d never play this set as-is because I’m not a fan of staying on the ground. And even if I were to tolerate that, I still wouldn’t because the nuke just doesn’t feel good to use. 

Edited May 24 by Ston

[Shin Magmus]

     Thank you.  I don't know what possible statement the average player can make about a powerset, that is more damning than "I would never play it."  Based solely on perception and sociology reasons, I would think that a powerset which "good" players all instinctively avoid is something that could stand to receive some buffs.  Seismic Blast falls into this category the same way that Archery does: the "good" players know these sets currently belong in the dumpster and so they also lack experience with the powersets to provide more-researched feedback.  They also might not complain much about the powersets because they're already written them off entirely, and you tend to not complain about something that you never interact with.  Seismic Blast currently combines several weaknesses (including gameplay-limited factors like needing to be grounded and a high degree of randomness) with 0 worthwhile strengths.  Even having 1 very strong power in Enhanced Stalagmite isn't a strength in terms of DPS or clear time compared to other powersets: as has been tested and proven.  Using every advantage available to the player: a "good" player can only elevate Seismic Blast to still being below the "par" performance of most other powersets.  From a game balance perspective, the only "advantage" that Seismic Blast truly has over these other sets is that its debuff effect is -jump and -fly, but that's just a sidegrade and not an actual true advantage.  The better-performing sets still get debuff effects, they just get -speed/-recharge or a different debuff instead.  Fire Blast is the only exception there, but that set doesn't have to stay grounded, so it still has advantages over Seismic Blast despite simple DPS.  Devs please listen: this set needs work.

[AmrasNotHere]

I hope this is on a list to improve somewhere 

[Herotu]

On 5/24/2024 at 5:38 PM, Shin Magmus said:

you tend to not complain about something that you never interact with.  

My life experience has taught me the opposite is true.

Edited June 21 by Herotu

[Shin Magmus]

54 minutes ago, Herotu said:

My life experience has taught me the opposite is true.

     Neat, well the point of my statement was: when a set isn't played by very many people, its problems will not be as discussed.  Only a small number of people actually stick with Seismic Blast and deal with the issues I've pointed out (like Aim consuming and wasting Seismic Shockwaves, instead of granting the effect).  Everyone else is just uninterested or quit on the set, and thus quiet.