Fix tanker cones to have larger range like pbaoes have

[WindDemon21]

Since the gauntlet change, one absolutely terrible, but fix the cones so they have 50% extra radius like pbaoes have. There is zero reason to not have done this after nerfing the arc (which even then the cones should have had a longer radius, not really an arc increase), but now that it was nerfed, they should be fixed to have the extra 50% radius just like the pbaoes have. It makes zero sense to not buff those too!

Edited Thursday at 07:25 PM by WindDemon21

[Psyonico]

They had increased radii at some point on open beta and was specifically changed because people said “this formula nets us less damage per target and doesn’t do a whole lot it increase targets hit” and brought the numbers to prove it.

[Shin Magmus]

   Longer ranged cones indeed don't benefit you 99% of the time.  You're in melee, so you'd have to back up out of melee to be able to actually benefit from the slightly longer cone, especially the increased width at the end of the cone.  Usually the longer cone simply "overshoots" all the enemies near you into dead space where there are no enemies.  This increased area factor does decrease proc rates... significantly, so it was only a hindrance.

 

   I really miss the wider cones: they were immediately both easier to use and just more fun.  It breathed new life into certain powers, and made them the high-point of picking a Tanker, such as Frost being an awesome fan out on so many enemies so easily.  What are these people doing?

[WindDemon21]

No i'm aware of this. Which is specifically why it's not supposed to be balanced for the larger area, which is what the original aoe buff to gauntlet was for. To give more area without lowering damage. Unless i missed it the increase to the radius on the aoes base area this round, only hurts procs, not the damage on the powers themselves right, or did i miss those aoes were nerfed on damage too? At either rate, they could do that for cones too regardless, and should. This just inadvertently hurts sets whose more aoe focus is on cones versus the actual full pbaoe, and it's quite unfair to those sets versus those that are mostly all just pbaoes.

 

 

[WindDemon21]

1 hour ago, Shin Magmus said:

   Longer ranged cones indeed don't benefit you 99% of the time.  You're in melee, so you'd have to back up out of melee to be able to actually benefit from the slightly longer cone, especially the increased width at the end of the cone.  Usually the longer cone simply "overshoots" all the enemies near you into dead space where there are no enemies.  This increased area factor does decrease proc rates... significantly, so it was only a hindrance.

 

   I really miss the wider cones: they were immediately both easier to use and just more fun.  It breathed new life into certain powers, and made them the high-point of picking a Tanker, such as Frost being an awesome fan out on so many enemies so easily.  What are these people doing?

Exactly, it just feels awful now. To be fair, it's the 90 degree cones that you really notice the boost of the previous wider arc more, so frost, eviscerate, and ripper most especially got hurt super bad by this.

 

But still, it made more sense for them to be 50% longer like pbaoes have, and still does make more sense, especially after taking away the arc increase, because if the cone was already wide enough, like 120 degrees, the larger arc hardly did anything, and one narrow cones, 50 degrees or less, the arc increase was so low that it was also hardly noticeable, however, with a longer radius, you can hit deeper, so it would still help all of the cones out rather equally (but obviously help the wider cones more)

 

For this reason honestly cones should have both an arc and radius increase as part of the tanker bonus. Now the larger target cap however means basically nothing since most cones are already designed to have the target cap be the maximum that it's going to hit anyway. These change are just terribly freaking stupid. (and still as a separate buff so they're not trying to lower the damage due to the larger cone size, again, i'm fairly certain that pbaoes didn't get lowered damage for their wider areas, (base damage, not proc chances which also sucks)

[WindDemon21]

22 hours ago, Psyonico said:

They had increased radii at some point on open beta and was specifically changed because people said “this formula nets us less damage per target and doesn’t do a whole lot it increase targets hit” and brought the numbers to prove it.

Also just if you missed the response Psy, the increased radius specifically shouldn't have to factor into the damage formula. That's why it made more sense for it to be an outside buff that increased the areas the way it was before (like all other inherent abilities). It was only mostly changed recently to be the powers themselves because the devs hate procs and this lowered the proc chances due to the larger area (which is still stupid, but won't fight on that part).

 

Though the base damage of the power, shouldn't be affected by the increased radius. Hence why it's an AT bonus. You wouldn't lower a scrappers base damage just because they have the ability to crit, or a blasters base damage because their inherent stacks up extra damage bonus.

 

The only odd outlier here are brutes which IMO their base damage should be higher but just lower the buff provided by fury which would make a lot more sense, but talking about tankers here, the aoe increase really should be just a bonus of the AT, it doesn't affect the pbaoe base damage due to the larger area, so it shouldn't have to factor into cones with a larger area on tankers either. Unless i missed that they lowered the damage on those pbaoes due to the larger area, but that was not mentioned anywhere i saw, and i didn't screenshot any values prior to page 28 to verify now either (i know the additonal targets damage was lowered, but that was just to make the extra targets not hurt as much, it wasn't changing the base damage on those powers)

[WindDemon21]

23 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

   Longer ranged cones indeed don't benefit you 99% of the time.  You're in melee, so you'd have to back up out of melee to be able to actually benefit from the slightly longer cone, especially the increased width at the end of the cone.  Usually the longer cone simply "overshoots" all the enemies near you into dead space where there are no enemies.  This increased area factor does decrease proc rates... significantly, so it was only a hindrance.

 

   I really miss the wider cones: they were immediately both easier to use and just more fun.  It breathed new life into certain powers, and made them the high-point of picking a Tanker, such as Frost being an awesome fan out on so many enemies so easily.  What are these people doing?

Right, well see response above about the extra area not factoring into the damage formula since it's an AT bonus. But on the cones, the extra radius on the pbaoes are nice, but i honesty enjoy by AT at least, the larger size on the cones because it makes some sets so much more fun especially with the larger target caps. Now without that, it's almost pointless for the cones to hit more targets because most of them won't ever reach any extras except a very select few cones.

 

I honestly wish, across all ATs, that these powers had more of an adaptive damage/end/rech. So if the cone hit only 2 enemies instead of 5, it would do more damage to those two versus the damage done to each 5 enemies. This would honestly be really nice across the board, but especially for melee cones, and also really help some sets out who are low on single target damage. Just imagine if jacob's ladder, or proton sweep, or even psy blade sweep, did high damage when it would hit just a single target. I think the recharge could not have to be adaptive, but the damage/end would per target hit, and it would make those cones so much nicer.

 

Edit: especially Ripper! Could you imagine how much that would help spines out if ripper was doing 1.5x damage or whatever when hitting only one target. Would really help out spine's poor ST damage. But yeah, these base cones without any boost just feel awful now on tankers 😕

Edited Friday at 06:59 PM by WindDemon21

[Maelwys]

On 6/26/2025 at 9:17 PM, WindDemon21 said:

Unless i missed it the increase to the radius on the aoes base area this round, only hurts procs, not the damage on the powers themselves right, or did i miss those aoes were nerfed on damage too? 

 

Yes, you missed it.

 

Increasing the Radius of AoE and Cone powers causes their base damage to drop. This was highlighted on test multiple times very, very loudly. Proc activation rate drops also due to the way PPM calculations work; but is not anywhere near as big a concern. 

 

They reverted the radius changes to Cones because of this base damage decrease. It was having a disproportionally severe negative impact on particular powersets like Staff and TW.

 

 

 

 

 

[FupDup]

2 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

Yes, you missed it.

 

Increasing the Radius of AoE and Cone powers causes their base damage to drop. This was highlighted on test multiple times very, very loudly. Proc activation rate drops also due to the way PPM calculations work; but is not anywhere near as big a concern. 

 

They reverted the radius changes to Cones because of this base damage decrease. It was having a disproportionally severe negative impact on particular powersets like Staff and TW.

Just wanna make the distinction that changing AOE size doesn't automatically cause damage to go down, that's a developer decision. The values in-game are not auto-calculated, they are manually inputted, as a choice. They use their magic formuloni as justification, but that's just a post-hoc justification for their manual data input. 

 

Really, there's a lot of melee cones that have both a small coverage area AND low damage, so that would indicate to me that the formuloni is scuffed. 

Edited Friday at 11:15 PM by FupDup

[Major_Decoy]

7 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Increasing the Radius of AoE and Cone powers causes their base damage to drop. This was highlighted on test multiple times very, very loudly. Proc activation rate drops also due to the way PPM calculations work; but is not anywhere near as big a concern. 

I feel like that's something that's a hold over from when there were no target caps. When there's no target cap, of course spreading the power over a larger area does less damage per target but it can hit more targets, so it's balanced.

[Wavicle]

Brute players complaining Tanks are STILL better than they are, Tanker players complaining Tanks have been nerfed too hard.

Sounds Juuuuust Right to me.

[WindDemon21]

18 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

Yes, you missed it.

 

Increasing the Radius of AoE and Cone powers causes their base damage to drop. This was highlighted on test multiple times very, very loudly. Proc activation rate drops also due to the way PPM calculations work; but is not anywhere near as big a concern. 

 

They reverted the radius changes to Cones because of this base damage decrease. It was having a disproportionally severe negative impact on particular powersets like Staff and TW.

 

 

 

 

 

Ok that's the point right there though. They SHOULDN'T decrease the base damage, since it's meant to be a bonus of the AT. Meaning it should be as part of the inherent so it's not affecting the damage. Even though they increased the aoe radius, they SHOULD have still left the damage the same. This is entirely on the deva for screwing that up. They need to just do it properly.

 

Again. You don't lower base damage for scrappers because their inherent gives them more damage. Or blasters for the same reason. Only outlier is brutes because they did it wrong where their base should be higher but fury give less. But they need other things fixed too so that's a other thread.

Edited Saturday at 02:43 PM by WindDemon21

[Maelwys]

7 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

Ok that's the point right there though. They SHOULDN'T decrease the base damage, since it's meant to be a bonus of the AT. Meaning it should be as part of the inherent so it's not affecting the damage. Even though they increased the aoe radius, they SHOULD have still left the damage the same. This is entirely on the deva for screwing that up. They need to just do it properly.

 

That was indeed how it functioned between issue26pg4 and issue28pg2.

But the global arc/radius buff has now been removed from Gauntlet. It's no longer part of the Tanker inherent.

 

In i28p2 the aforementioned global buff was removed then each Tanker AoE and Cone was manually tweaked. Their AoEs with a base radius of less than 15ft had their radius increased by 50% (and their Cones originally also had their radius increased likewise before this was reverted due to outcry). Then at the 11th hour right before the patch hit live the Devs increased the base damage of Tanker AoEs so that their damage per activation almost matched what Tankers had previously been used to. As a result aside from a slightly lower proc activation rate Tanker AoEs were essentially unchanged (until you start hitting more than 10 targets and the new Overcap damage reductions kick in) and Tanker Cones had their Arc and Radius lowered to base level (eg the same as what Brutes get) but their damage and Proc activation rate were both left intact.

 

There were a lot of changes that happened during Beta; and what eventually landed on Live is a very mild compared to the originally planned Tanker nerfs. I hate trying to catch multiple foes with a narrow cone arc as much as the next guy, but I very much doubt the Devs are going to be buffing Tankers again any time soon. IMO realistically most we can hope for is a slight reduction in the harshness of the Overcap mechanic (eg from -67% to -50%) and maybe a increase to the tanker aggro cap.

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

That was indeed how it functioned between issue26pg4 and issue28pg2.

But the global arc/radius buff has now been removed from Gauntlet. It's no longer part of the Tanker inherent.

 

In i28p2 the aforementioned global buff was removed then each Tanker AoE and Cone was manually tweaked. Their AoEs with a base radius of less than 15ft had their radius increased by 50% (and their Cones originally also had their radius increased likewise before this was reverted due to outcry). Then at the 11th hour right before the patch hit live the Devs increased the base damage of Tanker AoEs so that their damage per activation almost matched what Tankers had previously been used to. As a result aside from a slightly lower proc activation rate Tanker AoEs were essentially unchanged (until you start hitting more than 10 targets and the new Overcap damage reductions kick in) and Tanker Cones had their Arc and Radius lowered to base level (eg the same as what Brutes get) but their damage and Proc activation rate were both left intact.

 

There were a lot of changes that happened during Beta; and what eventually landed on Live is a very mild compared to the originally planned Tanker nerfs. I hate trying to catch multiple foes with a narrow cone arc as much as the next guy, but I very much doubt the Devs are going to be buffing Tankers again any time soon. IMO realistically most we can hope for is a slight reduction in the harshness of the Overcap mechanic (eg from -67% to -50%) and maybe a increase to the tanker aggro cap.

Yes I knew that part, that's what the actual problem is with them changing the powers themselves instead. Now, if they wanted to take it away from that, because I KNOW they wanted to hurt it for procs specifically, that's fine. But this should still be a special case where it gets a larger radius, without that extra radius factoring into it's damage. It's scary honestly to hear that they planned for WORSE nerfs, but not surprising sadly.. End point being though, they should still increase the cone sizes without changing the damage they do.

 

Edit: And honestly, with the larger radii, or even arc angle on the cones before, tankers were actually FUN because of that, and now they feel just as bad as any other AT with the smaller cones, and really just hurts a lot of the fun 😕

Edited Saturday at 05:32 PM by WindDemon21

[Maelwys]

Narrow cone arcs are annoying on any melee AT. But adding radius isn't going to help on anything with a Taunt Aura or punchvoke because the enemies cluster around you rather than queueing up in a nice neat 30 ft long line.

Mobile characters that get to remain stay at range and can tag the whole spawn with Ranged cones? Or Hoversnipers that can fly directly above and essentially turn them into a targeted AoE? Sure, they might get milage from +range and +radius. But not Meatshields or Facepunchers.

 

And the Tanker nerfs were NOT PROC FOCUSED. The Devs told us exactly why the nerfs happened within the patch notes (under "design notes") and there's a TL;DR summary here.

The problem with Tanker overperformance was always "being able to deal full damage to 60% more enemies" (whilst simultaneously having more wiggle room in the build to ramp up their damage output, since they need fewer build compromises to meet survivability thresholds). Procs being king on Tankers is a very common misconception: Procbombing of attacks actually favours Brutes over Tankers, due to the former losing far less net damage whenever their attacks aren't getting ED capped for damage aspect. 

 

Edited Saturday at 06:00 PM by Maelwys

[WindDemon21]

10 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Narrow cone arcs are annoying on any melee AT. But adding radius isn't going to help on anything with a Taunt Aura or punchvoke because the enemies cluster around you rather than queueing up in a nice neat 30 ft long line.

Mobile characters that get to remain stay at range and can tag the whole spawn with Ranged cones? Or Hoversnipers that can fly directly above and essentially turn them into a targeted AoE? Sure, they might get milage from +range and +radius. But not Meatshields or Facepunchers.

 

And the Tanker nerfs were NOT PROC FOCUSED. The Devs told us exactly why the nerfs happened within the patch notes (under "design notes") and there's a TL;DR summary here.

The problem with Tanker overperformance was always "being able to deal full damage to 60% more enemies" (whilst simultaneously having more wiggle room in the build to ramp up their damage output, since they need fewer build compromises to meet survivability thresholds). Procs being king on Tankers is a very common misconception: Procbombing of attacks actually favours Brutes over Tankers, due to the former losing far less net damage whenever their attacks aren't getting ED capped for damage aspect. 

 

Not prior. Prior the procs were calculated based on the orignal area of the aoes. Gauntlet, was a separate buff that boosted the radius, while proc calculations were still based off the original area of the aoe. So per area, procs were much more effective on big mobs than they are now (50% more so) as per damage, yeah you still want to enhance the actual attack for damage too, but saying for each proc, it would get that extra benefit of more procs in the larger area. Not that what you said about brutes isn't true, but it was extra so for tankers with how they worked before, so it's really a double or triple nerf that tankers got now, and just feels awful.

 

Also, enemies do cluster around you but will also still have a max saturation that they can be in that immediate area (especially think big box enemies like freaks), but the increased radius would still help cones greatly (especially those wider ones) in many situations. Again, this is all regarding that they keep the damage the same like they should, and not recalculate the damage based on the new area, as it should be an AT bonus. And also, man does it really suck to not have the increased radius for extraneous powers like armor aoe powers like dark regeneration and epic aoes, especially for aggro'ing. Really hurt that too.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, WindDemon21 said:

So per area, procs were much more effective on big mobs than they are now (50% more so)

 

PPM calculations don't use radius as a straight multiplier.

 

Taking Fire Sword Circle as an example:

With a 10ft base radius (on Brutes, Scrappers, etc and Tankers before i28p2) each 3.5PPM damage Proc in it will have a 62.2314% activation chance. With a 15ft base radius (on Tankers post i28p2) that drops to a 49.2062% activation chance. Since 3.5 PPM Damage Procs typically deal 71.751 damage, that works out to an average loss of just -9.3 damage per proc per target, before resistances and Purple Patch.

And due to the "Overcap" damage reductions, that number will drop even further whenever you're hitting more than 10 targets, for just -3.1 damage per proc per target.

Even taken across the maximum 16 targets that's not a huge deal considering that FSC even when completely unslotted was dealing nearly 1500 damage before the patch.

 

It's honestly a drop in the ocean. And it's even less of a concern for Cones if the Devs were to just manually bump the arcs up rather than reverting back to a global buff.

[WindDemon21]

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

PPM calculations don't use radius as a straight multiplier.

 

Taking Fire Sword Circle as an example:

With a 10ft base radius (on Brutes, Scrappers, etc and Tankers before i28p2) each 3.5PPM damage Proc in it will have a 62.2314% activation chance. With a 15ft base radius (on Tankers post i28p2) that drops to a 49.2062% activation chance. Since 3.5 PPM Damage Procs typically deal 71.751 damage, that works out to an average loss of just -9.3 damage per proc per target, before resistances and Purple Patch.

And due to the "Overcap" damage reductions, that number will drop even further whenever you're hitting more than 10 targets, for just -3.1 damage per proc per target.

Even taken across the maximum 16 targets that's not a huge deal considering that FSC even when completely unslotted was dealing nearly 1500 damage before the patch.

 

It's honestly a drop in the ocean. And it's even less of a concern for Cones if the Devs were to just manually bump the arcs up rather than reverting back to a global buff.

Cool, seems odd with how the devs coded that but any little bit helps i guess. Still doesn't change though that they should be giving the extra radius as the AT bonus though, without the extra area factoring into the damage calculations. Still their choice, there isn't some magical overlord making them be forced to calculate it in.