What is Meant by "Weak" or "Underperforming" Powersets?

[TheMoneyMaker]

On 8/23/2024 at 11:53 AM, Without_Pause said:

The issue isn't explaining water being wet. It is far more infamously used in things like 'Not that I'm a racist, BUT (says something racist)' Sometimes you need to be a dick. Be a dick. Don't apologize for it. See pet peeve 'Sorry not sorry.' 😀 Note, don't be a racist. #CaptainObvious

I prefer to be an ass.

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

  

On 8/23/2024 at 4:53 PM, Without_Pause said:

Be a dick.

I prefer to be an ass.

  

(There's a campaign speech in there somewhere; surely...)

[Scarlet Shocker]

On 8/20/2024 at 9:06 PM, Waljoricar said:

it's disheartening when I learn that Kinetic Melee is objectively the worst melee set out there. Or that Poison on Masterminds is just a woefully underperforming set. Like I said, concept is king, but I also want to have a good time as I play and feel like my character packs a wallop, you know?
 

 

Don't read the numbers.

 

Mostly "underperforming" tends to mean "I can't beat everything solo."

 

I played a Kin Melee tank and it was a ton of fun and truthfully the only tank I've ever enjoyed playing in this game. No it won't wipe maps super fast compared to some other builds but it was sturdy, survivable and most of all, fun. YMMV but ignore the stats and see for yourself.

 

On live, Thugs/Poison MMs were considered to be the AV killers and I played one with success and it was again, very enjoyable. Yes, it was slightly squishy (show me an MM that isn't?) but that can be part of the charm of it.

 

I've played power sets that were alleged to be amazingly brilliant and yet I disliked intensely. I've played others that are mediocre and enjoyed them despite feeling their lack of performance. A lot will depend on what you get out of the game, your particular play style and the synergy of those you team with, as well as other considerations such as build and pool powers.

 

Get back to concept and see how it feels for yourself before judging by the standards of others.

[Waljoricar]

Hi all!

I have a terrible cold at the moment, but reading all of your comments has been super nice. Thanks for continuing to keep things interesting.

 

6 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Don't read the numbers.

 

[Snip]

 

Get back to concept and see how it feels for yourself before judging by the standards of others.

I'm gonna do just that! I was never really at any huge risk of compromising my character concepts, but I was curious about how relevant the language being used to describe their powersets was and, frankly, it isn't very. There are just too many variables, from my own short and long-term goals, gameplay style, difficulty settings and budget, to the context of original conversation I've been attempting to glean tips from. Trying to extrapolate universal truths about a powerset's eficacy is futile, especially if I'm not actually joining the conversation.

I might give Regen (except on Sentinels) and Posion (on Masterminds) a miss though.

Edited August 28 by Waljoricar

[Scarlet Shocker]

5 hours ago, Waljoricar said:

Hi all!

I have a terrible cold at the moment, but reading all of your comments has been super nice. Thanks for continuing to keep things interesting.

 

I'm gonna do just that! I was never really at any huge risk of compromising my character concepts, but I was curious about how relevant the language being used to describe their powersets was and, frankly, it isn't very. There are just too many variables, from my own short and long-term goals, gameplay style, difficulty settings and budget, to the context of original conversation I've been attempting to glean tips from. Trying to extrapolate universal truths about a powerset's eficacy is futile, especially if I'm not actually joining the conversation.

I might give Regen (except on Sentinels) and Posion (on Masterminds) a miss though.

 

Poison is one of my go-to sets. I absolutely love it for it's debuffs and the way it floors even tough opponents.

 

If you struggle with MMs may I suggest a /Poison controller? I've had excellent results with both Dark and Earth (Dark is especially good because they struggle to hit you and you strip their armour) - and the Dark/Poison is a potent PVP option so getting those goodies from RV is less arduous than it might otherwise be. (Disclaimer - I've not PVP'd in a long long time so that may be less true but I'm unaware of significan't PVP changes)

[MrQuizzles]

When the Devs sit in on a Hamidon raid and hear people calling for "slick twilight", they see people teleporting downed heroes into a pile, and then a Trick Arrow defender launches Oil Slick Arrow, and a Dark defender uses Howling Twilight on the oil slick to res the whole group at once.

 

When a developer witnesses that, and the first thing they do is nerf it because neither Trick Arrow nor Dark Miasma were ever meant to be viable or usable in anything resembling end-game content, that's what underperforming means.

[High_Beam]

1 hour ago, MrQuizzles said:

When the Devs sit in on a Hamidon raid and hear people calling for "slick twilight", they see people teleporting downed heroes into a pile, and then a Trick Arrow defender launches Oil Slick Arrow, and a Dark defender uses Howling Twilight on the oil slick to res the whole group at once.

That is a rube Goldberg device of a niche right there.

[Kaika]

2 hours ago, MrQuizzles said:

When the Devs sit in on a Hamidon raid and hear people calling for "slick twilight", they see people teleporting downed heroes into a pile, and then a Trick Arrow defender launches Oil Slick Arrow, and a Dark defender uses Howling Twilight on the oil slick to res the whole group at once.

 

When a developer witnesses that, and the first thing they do is nerf it because neither Trick Arrow nor Dark Miasma were ever meant to be viable or usable in anything resembling end-game content, that's what underperforming means.

Are you just... trying to make up an example here or...?

Trick arrow and Dark miasma are both considered very good atm in end game. Even if you are just trying to give a hypothetical here I'm not sure what your point is under-preforming sets aren't like that because the devs have some vendetta against them. They are considered underpreforming because they are considered to preform below the standards of their peers, this doesn't mean they are unusable junk the devs nerfed into the ground because someone found something cool. An underprefoming set can still be good in isolation, Just that the sum of their parts arguably adds up to less then that of other choices. Not counting beta I'm pretty sure kin melee has never been touched by the nerf bat, it's just that the damage is a bit lower overall and tends to be loaded into the back of the animations, making them often hit dead targets in groups, it has long animations which don't quite make up for it in DPS, and the build up replacement it gets is kinda bad. It's still fully functional, hell most players probably wouldn't even realize it's a underpreforming set if played in isolation (see OP for example) but when put side by side with something like energy melee it falls behind a bit in most situations. That's all underpreforming means.

Edited September 19 by Kaika

[MrQuizzles]

No, that actually happened 18 years ago, and neither Trick Arrow nor Dark Miasma were very good at the time.

[Kaika]

36 minutes ago, MrQuizzles said:

No, that actually happened 18 years ago, and neither Trick Arrow nor Dark Miasma were very good at the time.

No Dark has ALWAYS been good, TA honestly used to be horribly underrated but was always ok (and is now insanely good BTW). In particular this interaction was nerfed because it goes against the strengths/weaknesses of the established powers and caused them to over-preform in a niche setting (hami raid). Oil slick arrow is target-able just due to needing a way to be lit on fire, howling twilight needs to target enemies as a condition to both add a level of risk and limit the powers effectiveness. Using oil slick to activate howling twilight, while a neat interaction from the player side, goes against the intention of how both powers are used, removing the risk and requirements for howling twilight's incredibly strong res, while using the oil slick in a unintended way. This is what we call a exploit, when abilities in a game are functioning correctly but able to be used in a unintended manor. If anything the change you are talking about was less of a nerf and more of a bug fix. Neither Dark nor TA got any worse outside of the specific niche scenario, where you have players with both sets together, alot of player bodies, and no enemies to target off of. That's not really a nerf or anything "underpreforming"

Edited September 19 by Kaika

[Maelwys]

35 minutes ago, MrQuizzles said:

No, that actually happened 18 years ago

(Can't remember the exacterifics, that "H" may have been a few letters earlier in the alphabet...)

[MrQuizzles]

10 hours ago, Kaika said:

No Dark has ALWAYS been good,

 

Certainly not before the fear rework (they used to run away instead of cower in place) and before the -Resistance was added to Tar Patch. There were a few other buffs it got here and there throughout the original game's run, but before those two major ones, Dark Miasma used to basically always get you auto-kicked from teams trying to do harder content. The biggest problem with it was mostly the double-dip penalties against higher level enemies. Not only would their base accuracy and damage be higher, but they'd resist your accuracy and damage debuffs by like 45% on top of that. And remember the -res wasn't there yet, so it was really quite painful.

 

The underperforming part of that interaction getting fixed was that Trick Arrow and Dark Miasma were exactly useless in Hamidon raids otherwise. Dark Miasma, especially, could do essentially nothing useful during the encounter.

[Kaika]

1 hour ago, MrQuizzles said:

 

Certainly not before the fear rework (they used to run away instead of cower in place) and before the -Resistance was added to Tar Patch. There were a few other buffs it got here and there throughout the original game's run, but before those two major ones, Dark Miasma used to basically always get you auto-kicked from teams trying to do harder content. The biggest problem with it was mostly the double-dip penalties against higher level enemies. Not only would their base accuracy and damage be higher, but they'd resist your accuracy and damage debuffs by like 45% on top of that. And remember the -res wasn't there yet, so it was really quite painful.

 

The underperforming part of that interaction getting fixed was that Trick Arrow and Dark Miasma were exactly useless in Hamidon raids otherwise. Dark Miasma, especially, could do essentially nothing useful during the encounter.

I'll give you that, didn't realize you were going THAT far back, however I still stand by what I said. Howling Twilight being usable off oil slick is very clearly an unintended niche interaction, removing it was more of a bug fix then a nerf. It just isn't a good example, especially considering it requires knowledge of the game balance from 2004-5ish. If you want to use old Dark miasma as an example of a under-preforming set, that was a good explanation, but that specific change isn't.

 

Anyways this is getting a bit meta.

 

Edit: Also looked it up just for clarity sake, Afraid was changed to fear in issue 3, the -res was added to tar patch in issue 4 and TA as a set was added in issue 5, so dark was good when that interaction was patched anyways

Edited September 20 by Kaika

[Captain Fabulous]

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