Focused Feedback: Marine Affinity

[BZRKR]

Are the crystals floating with the fish in the top part new? I remember crystals around the base from before. Either way they are also in the "Water Only" option, which I'm not a fan of:

(Yes they can be made more innocuous if they weren't orange 🙂) 

[TygerDarkstorm]

I see we are to a release candidate but Tide Pool is still lacking a proper animation.

[Laenan]

23 hours ago, BZRKR said:

Are the crystals floating with the fish in the top part new? I remember crystals around the base from before. Either way they are also in the "Water Only" option, which I'm not a fan of:

(Yes they can be made more innocuous if they weren't orange 🙂) 

 

Yes, the crystals are there even in "water only" which feels off. I confirmed this both in the creator and in game.

 

There is a typo in the character power select screen for Brine- the first sentence reads "...that reduces your foes' resistance to damage maximum hit points" There needs to at least be an "and" in there, or even better "...that reduces your foes' resistance to damage and reduces their maximum hit points.

 

Set feels great overall, but it does feel like there should be some kind of offensive power to power of the depths. Even just a knockdown effect that's unenhanceable to avoid proc abuse, but you're swirling all this water and these tentacles and then it's some great buffs, but it all that water-y force doesn't touch the enemies. Would be a nice flavor addition to include that.

[Laenan]

Additionally, I tested at level 27 against a warriors radio mission. I found myself wanting three things- one I mentioned above, adding some kind of offensive something to the Power of the Depths. So much swiling water and tentacles should at least do some knockback/down, or a little damage from the power. Second toroidal bubble as a toggle so I didn't have to keep clicking it would be nice. Third, the barrier reef to be a "there until it's defeated or you despawn it pet". At four minutes it feels like a silly thing to need to recast and just adds a click tax to a fairly active set. Those two things are very minor of course, but in a perfect world I'd love these changes based on my testing.

 

[Tacheyon]

1 hour ago, Laenan said:

Additionally, I tested at level 27 against a warriors radio mission. I found myself wanting three things- one I mentioned above, adding some kind of offensive something to the Power of the Depths. So much swiling water and tentacles should at least do some knockback/down, or a little damage from the power. Second toroidal bubble as a toggle so I didn't have to keep clicking it would be nice. Third, the barrier reef to be a "there until it's defeated or you despawn it pet". At four minutes it feels like a silly thing to need to recast and just adds a click tax to a fairly active set. Those two things are very minor of course, but in a perfect world I'd love these changes based on my testing.

 

 

I've made my peace with the Toroidal Bubble and Barrier Reef.  Both are similar to other powers, Bubble is like the Empowering Circuit in EA (this one gives you End plus Resists, so it's hard to toggle and still get the End boost) and Reefer is like Fluffy (Dark Miasma Pet).  Both need to be recast at various intervals and is now part of my Pre-Engagement checklist.  Not that it is needed every fight, but the Bubble I have on a lower CD so its ready before it drops.

There are enough Toggles to run, that we don't really need any more.

 

Put I do agree with the Power of the Depths.  Especially if you cast it on Tidal Pool.

[arcane]

I think Power of the Depths already has a lot of great effects and I wouldn’t want to see one removed in exchange for something offensive.

[Bionic_Flea]

I've been slow leveling a Marine/Water corrupter on Open Beta on mostly SOs (I have the Panacea and the +def & +res uniques slotted).  It's been fine on low settings until about level 20 and I am dying several times per mission, mostly due to mezzes and debuffs.   Most other support sets have a tool to avoid or mitigate debuffs, either through significant defense, -tohit, mez protection or resistance, or otherwise has protection against debuffs or some mez of it's own to mitigate.  Marine's toolkit, while impressive, doesn't really have any of that.  Specifically: no significant defense (It has minor defense in Barrier Reef), no -tohit, and no mez resistance or protection.

 

I have found myself several times chain held and debuffed to death.  Not fun.  Yes, I know that I can fill those holes at higher levels with incarnate powers, IO builds, and an assortment of temp powers.  My point is that at at these low levels on an SO build, Marine doesn't stack up to other sets.  Without being able to avoid some mez and debuffs I think you will find many players get frustrated and give up.

 

Dark has a ton of -tohit (plus defense from Fade if controller); Electric has Faraday cage;  Force Field and Sonic have Dispersion bubbles for def or res AND mez protection;  Nature has Spore Cloud for -tohit and Entangling Aura hold;  Poison has Weaken and Venomous for -tohit and two holds;  Rad has HUGE -tohit in Radiation Infection, Mez resist in Accelerate Metabolism, and 2 holds;  Storm has +def in Steamy Mist, -tohit in Hurricane, a ton of KB and a stun; Time has HUGE self and team defense in Farsight, -tohit in Time's Juncture, and a hold;  Traps has Defense AND mez protection in FFG, -tohit in seeker drones, a hold in Poison Gas, and some of the pets draw aggro; and finally, Trick Arrow has Flash Arrow for -tohit, a sleep in Poison Gas Arrow, Team Mez resistance and a hold in Emp Arrow, another hold in Ice Arrow, and KB in Oil Slick.

 

The only sets left over are Marine, Cold, Empathy, Pain, and Thermal.  You don't see many Empathy, Pain, and Thermal running around, not as many as those other sets.  At least I don't see as many.  Colds are everywhere, but I mostly see them in 4* and other hard content usually in pairs so that they are covering each other, and the rest of the team, in significant defense.

 

I would suggest adding mez resistance to Torroidal Bubble and some -tohit to Shoal Rush to address the problem of mez and debuffs and to give better parity with other support sets.

[arcane]

If you guys wind up getting the -res in this set (or something else truly worthwhile) reduced again over some of these wackier wants, Ima be pissed.
 

You don’t need -ToHit to function. All of my Storms and my Natures skip those powers in fact. And mez *resistance* is largely useless compared to other attribute boosts.

Edited July 21 by arcane

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

Re-focus please.  Talk about the proposed content and your testing, not argue about each other's posts.

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I would suggest adding mez resistance to Torroidal Bubble and some -tohit to Shoal Rush to address the problem of mez and debuffs and to give better parity with other support sets.

 

Fear or Stun could be alternatives.. Some 'holy crap, flying fish!'.

 

I'm guessing your experience is that the -Dam and Slows are just not as helpful when up against mezzes.

[Bionic_Flea]

4 minutes ago, Troo said:

I'm guessing your experience is that the -Dam and Slows are just not as helpful when up against mezzes.

 

Correct.  The resist and -dam help me last longer, but if I get hit by just about every mez and debuff I am still a piñata -- just a sturdier one.

[Seed22]

The set strikes me as baby kinetics but water themed. Kin is solid and literally meta for most content without any mez prot for the caster. 
 

I think Marine will sit somewhere next to it at the table and imo doesn’t need mez prot on top of everything it already does.

 

 

Which is weird to say, cause I’m all for buffs on a lot of things. 

[ExeErdna]

The main thing I agree upon is having a frenzy proc on Depths if you're on a Tide Pool. The lack of Mez is pretty much the weakness of most support sets which is why Tide Pool and Shifting Tides are so strong upon this set. So if you're worried about Thorns mobs you have to play in a group which is what this set wants that's why it's so good on MM's. This is why I wish I could get a decent group running in Brainstorm so I can test this in a proper environment. Running solos can only present so much data, and because of that I can see Marine users having fun in the trials due to having a lot of enemies around.

[Photovolt]

I just want to know when the Marine Affinity is set to release so I can finally play my tech-based water hero!

Edited July 22 by Photovolt

[Bionic_Flea]

Soon^TM

[MirrorDarkly]

The latest patch allowed me to test the updates to Brine on My Illusion controller, vs a lv 54 Diabolique.

 

Unfortunately the -hp is still not doing much, even with a 5 sec cooldown and hitting it every chance I could get.  Most of the fight Brine was reducing her hp by -666 (or about 2.775 hp/sec off her regen) and the highest it ever got to was -888hp.  For reference one stack of Degen is -650 hp.  

 

For this test Brine had a 95% hit chance and +45% healing.

 

I'd still take the power for the -Res, but I think as it's designed trying to stack the -hp is a waste of animation time (at 2 sec a cast) unless you literally have nothing else to do.   

 

 

 

Edit: As a thought experiment on a Defender that slotted it to +95% heal, that would work out to -1,191hp most of the time with a peak of  -1,588hp ( -6.61 regen/sec).  So again even with their low damage values I'd think the cast time would be better spent on attacks as long as you maintain the -Res debuff. 

Edited July 23 by MirrorDarkly

[UltraAlt]

On 7/5/2024 at 7:12 PM, The Curator said:

Whitecap- Summon and ride a wave of water towards your target, crashing down to knock over all enemies in the radius and staggering them, lowering their damage resistance! Enemies close to where you crash will receive harsher debuffs for a brief time.

 

I haven't read through all the patch notes, but tonight I saw that

1) this will not go off when a pet or friendly NPC if they do not have a target selected.

2) if the pet or friendly NPC has a target selected, it will go off and you "teleport"/"wave ride" the the location of the targeted pet or friendly NPC and not to the enemy that they have targeted.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/11/2024 at 12:24 AM, UltraAlt said:

Mastermind - Beast/Marine Affinity

 

Level 31 (to have slotting for the level 30 power pick.

 

Teamed with a level 32 Marine Affinity/Storm Blast defender.

 

I have to say that that this set looks as good or better than electric for a mastermind.

 

I would like to see more fish jumping around, but I understand that with too many Marine Affinity on one team that it might get too crazy.

Colors can be customized so that they are not an eye strain (watchout for using white in powers - especially when the game won't allow us to change the white areas during power customization which happens for several powers in this set - and not allowing duller colors during customization. Maybe another pallet of "Neutral" color options needs to be added between "Bright" and "Dark")

 

I didn't have time to check to see if Barrier Reef had its jump height increased or not. It was getting stuck on fences previously.

[Shin Magmus]

     At this point I should admit that I'm not super interested in playing this set on release, but it seems fine and is a solid mid-tier set that boosts both survival and kill speed "enough".  I think it just doesn't appeal to me outside of theme, and it's not overtly powerful enough to displace my existing supports.

 

     It's way better than Empathy, and I'm going to surely appreciate the constant benefits of powers like Barrier Reef and Shifting Tides when tons of players are spamming Marine alts after the patch drops, but I'm just not feeling it.  Kudos to the animation team on some of these powers though: fishtastic.

[UltraAlt]

16 hours ago, Photovolt said:

I just want to know when the Marine Affinity is set to release so I can finally play my tech-based water hero!

 

Soon^tm

[BZRKR]

8 hours ago, MirrorDarkly said:

he latest patch allowed me to test the updates to Brine on My Illusion controller, vs a lv 54 Diabolique.

Just curious, how do you have Brine slotted?

[MirrorDarkly]

1 hour ago, BZRKR said:

Just curious, how do you have Brine slotted?

 

For that test it was mostly benefiting from Vigor Core Paragon (+45% healing) and it also had an Acc enhancement.  The huge cooldown reduction comes from all of my pets generating Shifting Tide stacks for it to consume, and the rest is my global cooldown.

 

 

On some of my defender tests I've invested more slots into Brine and even at +127% "healing" if doesn't feel much different to use.  When I took that defender against a level 54 Infernal I was not able to budge his health.  However, as a solo defender I was also not able to generate enough stacks to keep using it every 5 seconds.  So it's possible on a defender that slots it and on a team constantly giving them shifting tide stacks to burn if performs better.... but that's a lot of conditionals that I have not been able to test. 

[BZRKR]

1 hour ago, MirrorDarkly said:

 

For that test it was mostly benefiting from Vigor Core Paragon (+45% healing) and it also had an Acc enhancement.  The huge cooldown reduction comes from all of my pets generating Shifting Tide stacks for it to consume, and the rest is my global cooldown.

 

 

On some of my defender tests I've invested more slots into Brine and even at +127% "healing" if doesn't feel much different to use.  When I took that defender against a level 54 Infernal I was not able to budge his health.  However, as a solo defender I was also not able to generate enough stacks to keep using it every 5 seconds.  So it's possible on a defender that slots it and on a team constantly giving them shifting tide stacks to burn if performs better.... but that's a lot of conditionals that I have not been able to test. 

Aha. Gotcha. One of the things that excites me about Brine is as a good place to slot the Theft of Essence Proc and however much more of the set the build allows for.

[MirrorDarkly]

5 minutes ago, BZRKR said:

Aha. Gotcha. One of the things that excites me about Brine is as a good place to slot the Theft of Essence Proc and however much more of the set the build allows for.

 

I love Theft of Essence and if I were having End issues slotting it would be the first fix I tried.  Since I use Vigor Core that's not been a concern but with a different Alpha slot I could see using it.  I may give that a try on a Defender and if I do I'll let you know how it goes.

[arcane]

How are people thinking of slotting:

 

Whitecap?

Tide Pool? (Maybe just an end redux in this one?)

Shifting Tides?

 

Trying to finalize my build today before the toon hits 50.

Edited July 23 by arcane