What would be the ideal recharge time for AoE Hold powers?

[Sir Myshkin]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

You'd need not only a ton of global recharge to pull this off reliably, but a lot of global accuracy bonuses as well.  Not sure even tactics alone would be enough considering the accuracy penalty aoe holds have, unless you are fighting even level stuff.  

 

The accuracy penalty the powers have is something else I think should be done away with regardless.

At +4 content, Cinders (specifically) has a 43% Accuracy. There's a lot of +Acc bonuses that people trip over in their builds by the time they get to 50. +30-40% is pretty easy to obtain. I popped open a build that didn't plan for it that has Fire Control already. Dropped Cinders into the build and all I had to do was give it one Acc IO to hit 95% (from 43%) between global bonuses, and just base-line Tactics. If you have enhanced Tactics, it's even less needed.

 

Just to give an example on recharge as well, my Fire/FF doesn't have Hasten, and is only bending global bonuses with 61.25%. If I put just the Acc/Rech from Unbreakable Constraints (which'll also get me 4% recovery since I'd use that proc), Cinders sits at 123/s. That build uses Agility and when I toggle that Alpha on, it pulls Cinders down to 105/s. The base recharge is so high on that power that there's not a lot you could really do that wont keep it at max probability to proc. 105/s is also somewhat tolerable for a mini nuke. This scenario is still not optimal, just a way of trying to make a poor power be more relevant in the current state of the game.

[Riverdusk]

6 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

At +4 content, Cinders (specifically) has a 43% Accuracy. There's a lot of +Acc bonuses that people trip over in their builds by the time they get to 50. +30-40% is pretty easy to obtain. I popped open a build that didn't plan for it that has Fire Control already. Dropped Cinders into the build and all I had to do was give it one Acc IO to hit 95% (from 43%) between global bonuses, and just base-line Tactics. If you have enhanced Tactics, it's even less needed.

 

Just to give an example on recharge as well, my Fire/FF doesn't have Hasten, and is only bending global bonuses with 61.25%. If I put just the Acc/Rech from Unbreakable Constraints (which'll also get me 4% recovery since I'd use that proc), Cinders sits at 123/s. That build uses Agility and when I toggle that Alpha on, it pulls Cinders down to 105/s. The base recharge is so high on that power that there's not a lot you could really do that wont keep it at max probability to proc. 105/s is also somewhat tolerable for a mini nuke. This scenario is still not optimal, just a way of trying to make a poor power be more relevant in the current state of the game.

Still say there is no need for the 15% to hit penalty aoe holds have at this point, which is worse since it is basically a tohit penalty, not accuracy. It is just insult on top of injury.  And I'm not counting on a bunch of IO accuracy set bonuses just to make my pathetic aoe hold hit at a rate that all other powers hit at a baseline.

 

Looking it up on paragonwiki against +4 enemies a normal attack with base 75% tohit gets reduced to 39.  The aoe holds have a base of 60% tohit, which I would think means it'd be down to 24%.  Not sure where you are getting 43% from?  Unless that info is out of date or I'm not understanding it.

Edited July 29, 2019 by Riverdusk

[Maxzero]

On 7/26/2019 at 3:41 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

Been doing experiments with procs, remembered this thread and thought I'd come back and post this:

 

Amusing side note that might possibly be worth testing, but the AoE Holds could be turned into an AoE damage power. If there's a sufficient amount of Global Recharge in a build that can act as the supplementary recharge, and as a consequence the Hold abilities can be six-slotted with a ton of Procs. So I hopped into Mid's and plugged in Fire Control to get to Cinders: dropped the Lockdown +2 Mag Hold proc*, Entomb +Absorb, +Dam Procs (Gladiator, Unbreakable, GW, and Neuronic). Used Kin to get some quick global rech out of Siphon Speed, and turned on Hasten for a total of 130%. With the Absorb Proc giving Recharge enhancement (as a Purple), Cinder's sits at 84/s recharge with a 14/s duration and does 297 damage upon hit. Bonfires can't even do that much over 45/s, I think there's suddenly a nice "Mini Nuke" for Controllers out there we didn't even know existed. I'll probably run off and test this at some point since it sounds rather amusing.

 

 

*this basically ups Cinders to Mag 5 since it will fast stack Mag 3 and Mag 2, which is nice for more resisted targets, doesn't necessarily mean much for most content.

 

One question I have is do AoE Holds that 'pulse' like Volcanic Gasses or Shadow Field have a chance to proc every pulse? While it does take time for the 'pulses' to come through it is extra damage potentially. Volcanic Gasses with its 10 second pulses seems a very likely prospect.

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by Maxzero

[oedipus_tex]

On 7/24/2019 at 2:56 PM, 5099y_74c05 said:

If I understand power proliferation, the powers are shared across Dominators and Controllers with AT specific modifiers applied to them. You can't change one without impacting the other and frankly it sounds like Dominators don't need the buff in terms of control.

 

As I understand it, no, the power available to each set is a deep clone of the set it was proliferated from, so there is a separate data object representing (for example) Controller Glacier from Dominator Glacier. The Dominator version was cloned from the Controller version and tags added to it to responded to a caster in Domination mode. Thus, it would theoretically be possible for each power to have wildly different characterstics. 

 

Allowing the Controller versions to always be Mag 4 might be a decent fix for these powers if we don't want to mess with their Recharge. Overall I feel like the powers are already pretty effective for Dominators and don't really need changes. But it wouldn't necessarily hurt for those to also be default Mag 4, increasing to Mag 8 (or 7 if they don't to fully double it) when in Domination mode.

 

If there is serious worry about this, they could just change the 20% chance for +1 Mag Controllers have on these powers to a 100% chance. That would apply to Controllers but not Dominators and allow them to hold most bosses.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Bossk_Hogg]

I don't see it mentioned, but on top of the blaster nukes being fast recharge AE cc, multiple secondary sets have actual AE mag 3 holds on a 90 second timer vs controller's 240 seconds (vines, ESD arrow, radioactive cloud).  

[Sir Myshkin]

6 hours ago, Maxzero said:

One question I have is do AoE Holds that 'pulse' like Volcanic Gasses or Shadow Field have a chance to proc every pulse? While it does take time for the 'pulses' to come through it is extra damage potentially. Volcanic Gasses with its 10 second pulses seems a very likely prospect.

I think this is a matter of contention at the moment. Distortion Field works in the same manner, and takes all the Hold procs, but there's currently a conflict in experiences. Bopper did the math and what they showed should do pretty decently with 4-5 procs in the ability, however in my testing against a single target (which to me gives more incentive to invest the slots, which should extrapolate to a larger crowd) I did not see a positive return. One proc hit, in total, over the duration of the field itself. Distortion has a 45/s duration and five ticks (one initial, and one more at each 10/s interval). Bopper's math says that I should actually be seeing at least one proc occur to the target per tick, but that's not even remotely close to what's happening. We both also noticed Purple procs having a higher probability over the others than should be occurring too.

 

Now if there became a minimum expectation of a guarantee proc against everything in the mob, that could be useful if it happened at the start up as a nice little "bump" to the power's utility. I was seeing the proc anywhere from the 10/s mark all the way to the last tick, but never at the beginning. That doesn't mean it couldn't, I just never got a proc right at dropping the power.

 

What's interesting is that I'm not 100% certain that every one of these powers is coded to act the same. Irradiated Ground is a pseudo-pet drop kind of like Distortion Field would act, but I've seen a far more significant return in proc rates in that power. I've plugged in -Res and gotten a reasonable amount of kick-back on it. So each power may need to be investigated individually, or find out just how exactly they're coded. Some powers like Sleet and Freezing Rain, as an example, are the same exact ability with different names.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Bopper's math says that I should actually be seeing at least one proc occur to the target per tick,

Technically, my test results showed slightly less than 1 proc per tick (0.96) if you had all 5 damage procs in DF, but that's symantics. Sounds like you were seeing something else.

 

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

That doesn't mean it couldn't, I just never got a proc right at dropping the power.

My tests showed it was fairly equiprobable in when procs come (at cast or at one of the subsequent ticks). An easy test of this, go find a mob of 20 rikti monkeys at PI and I guarantee you there will be at least 1 proc each interval.

[Redlynne]

3 hours ago, Bopper said:

An easy test of this, go find a mob of 20 rikti monkeys at PI and I guarantee you there will be at least 1 proc each interval.

I was actually going to recommend testing Distortion Field loaded with procs on Monkey Island to the north of Portal Corp if you wanted to do mass target testing ...

[Hjarki]

9 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

What's interesting is that I'm not 100% certain that every one of these powers is coded to act the same. Irradiated Ground is a pseudo-pet drop kind of like Distortion Field would act, but I've seen a far more significant return in proc rates in that power. I've plugged in -Res and gotten a reasonable amount of kick-back on it. So each power may need to be investigated individually, or find out just how exactly they're coded. Some powers like Sleet and Freezing Rain, as an example, are the same exact ability with different names.

I'd suggest there are broad categories of powers, since that's inevitably how they would be coded.

 

My observation is that Sleet and Freezing Rain have an initial chance to proc, but no subsequent chance to proc. This implies (at least to me) that the procs can be 'slotted' into the initial power, but not the subsequent ticks. The powers might also have multiple different effects that have different proc patterns. For example, Sleet/Freezing Rain are both a damage effect and a slow/debuff effect. Procs triggering from damage wouldn't trigger from the slow/debuff portion while slow procs wouldn't trigger from the damage portion.

 

I'd also speculate that there are powers - such as Hurricane - where the chance to proc is dependent on the chance of the underlying power to proc. My experience was that Explosive Strike (knockback proc) occurred seldomly in Hurricane; my speculation is that this is because of the 5% chance for kb (so 95% of the time when it could proc, it doesn't because the underlying power doesn't proc). This could theoretically be an issue with Distortion Field as well, although my observation was that it proc'd far more often than that would indicate. It also doesn't explain a disparity between purple and non-purple proc rates (that might just be a sample size issue). I observed the same thing with Repel. If you just stand around in the middle of nowhere, your Force Feedback will never proc - it only starts proc'ing once the field starts triggering.

 

However, I do not believe that each power is individually coded.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 8/1/2019 at 6:24 PM, Bopper said:

My tests showed it was fairly equiprobable in when procs come (at cast or at one of the subsequent ticks). An easy test of this, go find a mob of 20 rikti monkeys at PI and I guarantee you there will be at least 1 proc each interval.

The thing that comes about from this, to me, is that if I have to have a mass target of 20, just to get a guaranteed 1 hit, then there's really not much point Okay so I went up to Monkey Island and killed 15 minutes testing it there, which is particularly easy considering how viscous those little buggers wanna get with you. I will say, from an experience stand point it was like I just tested two completely different abilities. For every 10-16 monkeys I pulled together I got 3-4 (on average) hits, with up to 6 in one swing on initial drop. If I was patient enough I could kill the entire group, but it took two drops of Distortion Field to do it. Something I did see here that I never saw on a Pylon: double proc, and it was always the purple proc backed by one of the others. So that was interesting. I can also say that I had several ticks that also did not proc anything at all. Even some scenarios where I got a few procs at drop, and then nothing until the last tick.

 

My take away on this comes down to the fact of yes, it looks to spread some damage around within a larger group, the more you can pack in, the larger the opportunities become, but on small to singular instances, it's kind of wasted effort. I think this comes down to if the slots are freely available, 2-3 damage procs will only help in an AoE short-fall, but this might really be a "YMMV" kind of choice. The procs end up doing ballpark similar damage to Irradiate for me, but random instead of guaranteed. If I ultimately have to fire off Irradiate the same number of times, regardless of the one or two extra dying in the process early, have I really saved myself added effort?

 

19 hours ago, Hjarki said:

My observation is that Sleet and Freezing Rain have an initial chance to proc, but no subsequent chance to proc.

And yet I have never gotten Sleet, Freezing Rain, Ice Storm, or Blizzard (all Rain based effects) to ever proc, either initially, or at all in their duration).

 

I think of how that stands now, versus how it used to be when procs first came out and people put them into Rain of Fire and it was like lighting a landfill on fire, you just watched everything burn into a messy pile of ash in a fast hurry. Considering that, I can't really say I'm surprised that whatever the original Devs did to stop that from happening might more-or-less strip these powers of being proc-capable, but it'd still be nice if they some how translated a toggle-style percentage or something. Maybe even some kind of code-setup like Tornado (that is proc friendly).

[Bopper]

6 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

My take away on this comes down to the fact of yes, it looks to spread some damage around within a larger group, the more you can pack in, the larger the opportunities become, but on small to singular instances, it's kind of wasted effort.

I am still surprised you're seeing less procs on a rikti pylon. As for my numbers, it was on a per target basis, so even if you used DF on 1 target, I expect the numbers I reported (well...my purple proc felt way too lucky, but still...).  I would still use this against a single target because of the power itself (it's a super slow debuff and a strong recharge debuff) and the proc damage is good. But you're right, the bread and butter of it would be with a mob as it has a 20 (maybe 25) foot radius and it can hit 16 enemies at once. 

 

Let's assume it is a 20 foot radius (as Pines shows), and it follows the formula Prob = PPM x ActivatePeriod / (60 x AF). I should expect the following with my 5 procs per tick per target:

AF = 1 + 0.75 x 0.15 x 20 = 3.25

Expected Damage of Unbreakable Constraint: Prob(Proc) x ProcDamage = 4.5 x 10 / (60 x 3.25) x 107.1 = 107.1 x 23.077% = 24.7154

Expected Damage of Regular Procs: 3.5 x 10 / (60 x 3.25) x 71.75 = 71.75 x 17.949% = 12.8782

 

With the purple and four regular procs, we get an expected damage per tick per target of: 24.7154 + 4 x 12.8782 = 76.2282

 

With 5 ticks total for DF, the total expected damage each target takes (assuming they remain in the DF region for the entirety of the 5 ticks): 5 x 76.2282 = 381

 

Now, I don't know all the ends and outs of the Distortion Field power. For example, I don't know if each tick is auto hit or if it does an accuracy roll. Nonetheless, all of my tests seemed to roughly match this type of expected performance. I truly don't know why you're seeing different when going against a single Rikti Pylon. If DF is doing an accuracy roll, perhaps my numbers are skewed by my extreme ToHit buff (all my rolls should be 95%). I'm on the test server now, I can see what happens when I try to take on a Rikti Pylon.

[Sir Myshkin]

2 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Now, I don't know all the ends and outs of the Distortion Field power. For example, I don't know if each tick is auto hit or if it does an accuracy roll. Nonetheless, all of my tests seemed to roughly match this type of expected performance. I truly don't know why you're seeing different when going against a single Rikti Pylon. If DF is doing an accuracy roll, perhaps my numbers are skewed by my extreme ToHit buff (all my rolls should be 95%). I'm on the test server now, I can see what happens when I try to take on a Rikti Pylon.

I had considered maybe the pylon was an oddity so I went up to Monster Island (was just a short flight away after all) and stomped on some giant DE. I didn't spend an extensive amount of time over there given I was using a secondary build that was only slotted on Distortion Field (with Acc/Hold and Acc/End on the last two of six slots, for what it's worth). If I dropped DF on one Monster, I got the same results as I did on a Pylon. If I grabbed a second critter and did two in the field, then I'd go from just one, to two, sometimes three. I didn't have the energy to properly build that thing up to test a larger group, but it feels like--to me--that Distortion Field is driven by how many things are sitting in the field when it procs. The more things in the field, the more it does.

 

Now, statistically speaking, duh, right? But to me it (from a visual perspective, and without hard-core going over the actual data in the log) looked like I was getting a set amount of hits back based on how many things I packed in. Kind of like the testing I did for Tenebrous and Torrent. Torrent especially, with the FF+Rech proc. If I only ever tossed it against one target, up to 4, I almost never saw it go off, but if I did 5, I'd suddenly see it here and there, and if it was 10, I was nearly guaranteed to get it. I feel a tad bit like I'm randomly rambling, acknowledging that I'm a bit tired and probably scrapped like two paragraphs worth of just... thoughts that didn't make sense, so I guess we'll see what you come back with if you do a ST test run longer than I did.

[Bopper]

41 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I had considered maybe the pylon was an oddity so I went up to Monster Island (was just a short flight away after all) and stomped on some giant DE. I didn't spend an extensive amount of time over there given I was using a secondary build that was only slotted on Distortion Field (with Acc/Hold and Acc/End on the last two of six slots, for what it's worth). If I dropped DF on one Monster, I got the same results as I did on a Pylon. If I grabbed a second critter and did two in the field, then I'd go from just one, to two, sometimes three. I didn't have the energy to properly build that thing up to test a larger group, but it feels like--to me--that Distortion Field is driven by how many things are sitting in the field when it procs. The more things in the field, the more it does.

 

Now, statistically speaking, duh, right? But to me it (from a visual perspective, and without hard-core going over the actual data in the log) looked like I was getting a set amount of hits back based on how many things I packed in. Kind of like the testing I did for Tenebrous and Torrent. Torrent especially, with the FF+Rech proc. If I only ever tossed it against one target, up to 4, I almost never saw it go off, but if I did 5, I'd suddenly see it here and there, and if it was 10, I was nearly guaranteed to get it. I feel a tad bit like I'm randomly rambling, acknowledging that I'm a bit tired and probably scrapped like two paragraphs worth of just... thoughts that didn't make sense, so I guess we'll see what you come back with if you do a ST test run longer than I did.

I feel ya, I think it's tester fatigue. I've been feeling it too. I'll let you know what I find, just now getting started.

 

Edit: @Sir Myshkin so I only did a few tests, but my numbers were extreme enough to tell you that I'm not seeing what you're seeing. I did 5 applications of DF on a Rikti Pylon. My To Hit Bonus was 119% so all my attacks seemed to have the maximum 95% chance to hit. I had all 5 procs in my power (like the numbers I used earlier). Here are my results:

Spoiler

 

First Test:

Cast/1st Tick) Regular Lethal and Regular Smashing proc'd

2nd Tick) Reg Lethal proc'd

3rd) Reg Smash

4th) Reg Psionic

5th) nothing

 

Second Test:

1st) Reg Smash

2nd) Reg Smash

3rd) Reg Smash and Reg Psionic

4th) Reg Lethal

5th) nothing

 

Third Test:

1st) nothing

2nd) Reg Smash

3rd) Purple Smash (about time)

4th) nothing

5th) nothing

 

Fourth Test:

1st) nothing

2nd) Reg Smash

3rd) Reg Smash and Purple Smash

4th) Reg Lethal

5th) Reg Psionic, Reg Lethal, Purple Smash

 

Fifth Test:

1st) Purple Smash

2nd) Purple Smash

3rd) Purple Smash and Reg Psionic

4th) Reg Smash

5th) Reg Lethal

 

 

I'll test again without Farsight in hopes my probability to hit is lower. I'll post my new findings with another edit to this post.

 

Edit #2: More testing. This time, no Farsight, so my To Hit Bonus was back at its base of 75%.

Spoiler

 

Test 6:

1) nothing

2) Reg Smash

3) nothing

4) nothing

5) nothing

 

Test 7:

1) Purple Smash and Reg Smash

2) nothing

3) Reg Psionic, Reg Lethal, Reg Smash

4) Purple Smash, Reg Lethal

5) nothing

 

Test 8:

1) Reg Psionic and Reg Psionic (I was shocked by this, but then realized I have two regular psionic procs lol)

2) Purple Smash

3) Purple Smash and Reg Smash

4) nothing

5) nothing

 

Test 9: 

1) nothing

2) Reg Psionic and Reg Lethal

3) Reg Psionic

4) nothing

5) nothing

 

Test 10: 

1) Purple Smash and Reg Psionic

2) Reg Psionic

3) nothing

4) Purple Smash

5) Reg Lethal

 

 

Overall, not much difference. Out of 25 ticks in my first 5 tests, I got 25 procs, 6 of them from the purple proc. For my last 5 tests I got 21 procs out of 25 ticks, with 6 of them from the purple proc. Plus I saw multiple procs, up to 3 procs on a single tick. It just seems I'm not seeing what you're seeing. How many procs are you using in your testing?

Edited August 3, 2019 by Bopper

[Sir Myshkin]

1 hour ago, Bopper said:

Overall, not much difference. Out of 25 ticks in my first 5 tests, I got 25 procs, 6 of them from the purple proc. For my last 5 tests I got 21 procs out of 25 ticks, with 6 of them from the purple proc. Plus I saw multiple procs, up to 3 procs on a single tick. It just seems I'm not seeing what you're seeing. How many procs are you using in your testing?

First time it was only two as I was just swapping out for existing slotting, but then I moved over to four with what I did tonight. I actually forgot about the Slow proc.

 

Something that is interesting, in your two sample sets there you did get 25 and 21 total procs, but one versus the other, the first set you had only six ticks with nothing, where in the second there was double that at 12 empty ticks. You had a lot more multiples in the second sample.

 

I might just have had bad luck, and I've not devoted a significant amount of time testing a single target with all four, I only dropped it three times and saw the same thing coming back (one hit) and stopped after that cause I got killed doing a fourth on two Monsters at the same time and died before I got to the fifth tick and didn't feel like going back to keep doing it tonight.

 

In terms of Rikti Monkeys though, I didn't get that same level of consistency on them either. Harder to gauge on them considering a purple and regular proc would kill them, but it took three regular (160.6 HP, procs were hitting for 79.9 or 79.8, something like that, so it was leaving them skittering around at .6-7 health after two hits). But I had a fair share of DF's end and have one or two Rikti running around either not hit at all, hit once (half health), or a sliver of life.

 

You're probably right about testing fatigue though. That's all I've really focused on for two-three hours (building and testing) a night, every night since Sunday... time to go just play for a bit I think and come back at it fresh later.

 

Edit to add: When I did run off and test Distortion with more procs, that was a slot-less build. The only thing at all with anything in it was Distortion Field, so no set bonuses, no toggles, nothing contributing globally (so no +Acc). But I did drop an Acc/End and Acc/Hold into the set to inherently enhance it, and that was it.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Sir Myshkin
edit noted

[Demon Shell]

What if Containment's damage amp was calculated by how many of the 4 mezes are in effect, instead of capping at one? Such that if an enemy is held, immobilized, and slept your next attack (which will wake the group up) will deal 3x Containment damage. If a mob has that many mez effects active on them, is there a reason you shouldn't hit that hard?

 

Would the AoE holds feel more attractive if they had the potential to amplify your damage, and the damage of every other Controller in the group? Would it feel less like a Sonic Blaster is stepping on your toes if you, as an Illusion or an Ice that doesn't have a stun, benefited from their stun?

[Coyote]

9 hours ago, Demon Shell said:

What if Containment's damage amp was calculated by how many of the 4 mezes are in effect, instead of capping at one? Such that if an enemy is held, immobilized, and slept your next attack (which will wake the group up) will deal 3x Containment damage. If a mob has that many mez effects active on them, is there a reason you shouldn't hit that hard?

 

Would the AoE holds feel more attractive if they had the potential to amplify your damage, and the damage of every other Controller in the group? Would it feel less like a Sonic Blaster is stepping on your toes if you, as an Illusion or an Ice that doesn't have a stun, benefited from their stun?

 

Whoa, that opens up a Can of Worms(tm)... some powersets can manage more different types of mezzing than others can without having to depend on allies to fill in the Sleep or Stun or Immobilize hole. And it's easier to add in Stun effects into a powerset that doesn't have them. You'd almost force a rebalancing of all of the attacks that benefit from Containment.

[oedipus_tex]

I've been thinking about this topic more, and now think possibly part of what should happen is not just an decrease in Recharge, but also an increase in area of effect and max targets hit. This would be a fair trade off I think and really put the 'control' in this powers without turning this into a 'city of statues' situation by just increasing durations.

 

So, perhaps these changes would make these powers attractive:

 

GLACIER/CINDERS:

Radius: 32ft (up from 25ft)

Max targets: 32 (up from 16)

Recharge: 160 seconds (down from 240)

 

 

GRAV DISTORTION FIELD/MASS DOMINATON/VINES/PARALYZING BLAST:

Radius: 25ft (up from 20ft)

Max targets: 32 (up from 16)

Recharge: 160 seconds (down from 240)

 

 

I think giving Mass Confusion the same treatment would do lots to bring Mind Control up to par with other sets.

 

 

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Redlynne]

Max Targets: 16 is the absolute largest max targets amount used for any power that affects Foes.

Only powers that affect Teammates are allowed to reach the Max Targets: 255 limit.

 

For this reason, your proposal to double the max targets receives a -1 vote.

[KelvinKole]

On 8/1/2019 at 2:40 PM, Bossk_Hogg said:

I don't see it mentioned, but on top of the blaster nukes being fast recharge AE cc, multiple secondary sets have actual AE mag 3 holds on a 90 second timer vs controller's 240 seconds (vines, ESD arrow, radioactive cloud).  

This is something I've been looking at recently as a way to basically have a double nuke/hold on blasters. If you pair a primary that has a nuke with a secondary control component, with a secondary that has one of those AoE controls slotted up with procs you can basically go mob to mob and  nukemez everything except bosses. That potential alone is enough reason that the controller skills need to be looked at. 

[oedipus_tex]

5 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Max Targets: 16 is the absolute largest max targets amount used for any power that affects Foes.

Only powers that affect Teammates are allowed to reach the Max Targets: 255 limit.

 

For this reason, your proposal to double the max targets receives a -1 vote.

 

Not true. The target cap for incarnate Judgement blasts caps at 40. The cap of 16 is an arbitrary number decided around the time that the AoE Holds were nerfed. There is no reason they couldn't affect 255 targets, if we wanted them to.

 

Moving the target cap on these powers would be a deliberate attempt to position them in a game where in an 8 man party all 8 party members can be expected to have nukes that hit 40 targets.

Edited August 13, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Scrapulous]

Procing aoe holds out is an interesting way to try to rehabilitate them as they stand, but that's also doable for the more repeatable control powers. These screenshots represent Fearsome Stare with two damage procs in it. Keep in mind that it's up for use every 17 seconds on a 40s base recharge. Every orange number you see is from a single application of Fearsome Stare (edit: except the little 85 in the foreground, but the 105s and 95s are all Fearsome Stare procs).

 

It's an interesting way to get more utility out of the aoe holds, but I still think they need a balance pass regardless of their proc potential, because that potential exists independent of their atrocious fundamental stats and is available to competing control powers that aren't subject to the same crippling nerfs.

 

As I recall, when aoe holds were nerfed because controllers were "trivializing content", the recharges were doubled and durations halved. I don't remember if the accuracies were set to .6 as part of that nerf or if they were always that way.

 

Scrap

Edited August 16, 2019 by Scrapulous
I decided after posting that I wanted to change the post.

[Sir Myshkin]

'Time Manipulation > Distortion Field' is what 'Gravity Control > Gravity Distortion Field' should've been from the get-go.

 

Change my mind.

[Maldroth]

11 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

'Time Manipulation > Distortion Field' is what 'Gravity Control > Gravity Distortion Field' should've been from the get-go.

 

Change my mind.

Gravity Distortion Field at launch is what Gravity Distortion Field should've stayed from the get-go. AoE Holds got over-nerfed. I'd gladly replace Dimension Shift or any other AoE Intangible however. They are too situational to use and every time I could pick that one I have multiple other better AoE methods that don't confuse my team mates or make me wait to attack.

[Maldroth]

10 minutes ago, 5099y_74c05 said:

I thought these were changed where you can enter the phased space and attack.

 

Still not a fan of this mechanic either way.

 

Was for Dimension Shift not sure about Black Hole. It is still clunky as it is now a 30 second toggle that I can cancel early or until the duration is out. Again I still feel in nearly all cases I have at least 1-3 different AoE Control options that are better to allow my team to still act, last about as long, can be modified, and don't require explanation of how it works, and take problem mobs out of a fight for a bit.

[Sir Myshkin]

16 minutes ago, Maldroth said:

Was for Dimension Shift not sure about Black Hole. It is still clunky as it is now a 30 second toggle that I can cancel early or until the duration is out. Again I still feel in nearly all cases I have at least 1-3 different AoE Control options that are better to allow my team to still act, last about as long, can be modified, and don't require explanation of how it works, and take problem mobs out of a fight for a bit.

I dunno, I mean, I get where you're coming from on Dimension Shift, but at the same time I feel the fault of not enough people knowing about the power is more the issue than the power itself. From a design standpoint, that power is brilliant.

 

Wait, hear me out!

 

Over in Warframe there's a character called Limbo who has an ability very much the same as Dimension Shift, but it works on a larger scale, and that scale can be enlarged even further (almost to the point of absurdity). I used it like mad because it causes damage, and it also isolates. I can toss a couple of damage procs into Dimension Shift and use it quite literally the same way. Turn on, spike damage, temporarily isolate a mob, turn it off. Or I can leave it running...

 

For Melee, DS has no transitional difference to them, they're heading into the zone regardless, and they're honestly perfectly fine being in there, potentially alone, more so than, say, a Blaster. What the shift allows you to do is not only separate and control a mob, but also very abruptly, and very efficiently, protect any number of the people on your team from taking any damage from the mobs within that field while also giving them the opportunity to prepare, and then go in and take care of business. Yes an AoE hold, or tentative sleep, or stun could do similar, but stun will wander; hold won't hit everything (possibly lieuts, probably not bosses, definitely not EB/AV), but Dimension Shift will grab that spawn and put them in isolated time-out. Your team can still act, they just have to be cognizant of the ability.

 

By comparison, it's really no different than Force Bubble, just in reverse effect (and... well, Force Bubble is ginormous) and points all the attention at you instead.

 

Definitely doesn't fit everyone's play-style, but not all powers will. As it stands though, Dimension Shift--in my opinion--is a pretty sweet deal.