Work In Progress Work In Progress: Weapon Mastery

This is fundamentally changing the entire game. Every aspect of it. If you fail at this, the entire game fails. I don't think the risk/reward is worth it on this one, and I have seen other MMOs do similar drastic changes and immediately decline into nothing.

im a dps and even though it will benefit me i just wish healers, trollers, and tanks could benefit from this in some way. I mean the other roles dont have time for combos when adds are constantly swarming them and how does a tank pull theses off when you have bosses that hit for 16k. The devs should have appealed to all roles or at least have it go to test servers.

Thanks for the clarification, I need to watch it again....
Welp, here's to.... Magnum Shot>Solar Flame> Photon Blast... let the devastation begin.

I know I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this but, "Why?"
It could be fun, make combat a bit more interesting, but why? Even as a dps, it seems to be a shortfall. Comboing out. of one weapon in the higher end content without clipping out is often to avail with so many npc interruptions. And melee mixed with range? why? Unless you're rage, meleeing anything in the end game is a foolish idea. I can see maybe soloing things it could be fun, or give pvp a new outlook, but of all of the things that could energy and resources could be used on (audio bugs, new enjoyable content...) It's stuff like this. Not to mention that now instead of one FOTM weapon, the floodgates have been opened to TWO fotm weapons. If anything, maybe give people a reason to troll, or tank, or heal. Sure, we had a sorc and nature revamp, but even so, after asking for solo heals, many healers have left or gone dps. Or just plain gone.

yeah, it really is a HUGE fundamental change and i have no idea how th heck they think the entire player base is going to just up and adapt... though that being said im open to the discussion.

But, as it stands now if we are using Raid groups as our talking point, current player tactics are literally the polar opposite of what this system suggests. we all know weapon usage has been in steady decline since launch and currently it is almost non existent.
with just that thought in mind i cant yet quite wrap my head around how we would transition into common use of this type of mechanic.
just seems like Bizarro world to me right now, lol.

Well after actually watching the video on twitch I think it all looks pretty interesting and hopefully it will be as positive a step as they seem to be wanting it to be. The combat could definitely be more in depth than as it stands now. Something to do with the skill points after it gets to the point of 'diminished returns', as it was referred to, is a welcome addition. There have been a lot of changes that have made it seem reactionary at times, but I likes the looks of this one. A guaranteed crit damage from well timed weapon combos with a power finisher sounds great.

I need to see more before I make a final decision but I’m somewhat underwhelmed thus far.

IMHO a weapon swapping mechanic would’ve been more beneficial for me as well as open up more interesting combat options.

That said, I hope that a 20 SP allocation in one tree isn’t the final cost to unlock the WM combos/innates.

I’d also like to see a means thru which we can unlock then innates without unlocking the actual combos.

In the end, if I’m wasting tons of SPs to get to these combos then something needs to be looked at, even with the available SPs to come.

Glad too see this wasn't just something I imagined.

Looking forward to this, gonna make my DPs even more powerful (and a question about the powers with long animations being short end: will they gain any boosts to compensate for the shorter cast time)

I agree to an extent, but honestly if they don't do something then every weapon and powerset is back to square one.

Nerf this, buff that, broken, it will just keep going on forever. Either something like this happens to balance out the game or it really never will be.

With that said, they need to be VERY open about whats going to go down with this so it doesn't turn into Galaxies all over again.

Excuse my ignorance here but this thread is going really fast I can't keep up so apologies if somone has asked this and/or it's been answered.

Tunso showed in the stream with weapon mastery that you do a weapon combo into another weapon combo followed up by a power attack, he then said ( I think) that when you hit the power after the weapon combos you get a crit chance/damage on the initial 3rd hit (power).

My question is.. How would that 3rd hit (power) crit chance/damage affect precision based powers in the fact they have to do a small might hit 1st before going into their more poweful combo (precision based) version?


Does that crit chance/damage carry on into 2... Ie smite into haunt or snap trap into fan? Or is just the 1 1st activated power after the weapon mastery combo?

tl;dr: if you are a healer or troll dont agree to solo any raid as a healer or troll... it only helps keep people in that role and benefits the team.... also make raids where there is no question YOU NEED a two tank team to pass it or it wont get done....

you bring up a great point...and im gonna be honest im tired when im in my healer role and someone asks me can i solo heal something.....

can i solo heal ? yes i can...do i want to...no i dont and usually when i say no im not going to solo it i get kicked from the pug group..now my league is a different matter they know i simply wont solo heal nexus dox or ab .. i dont like the position that puts my team in when i do it.. so when if and when i get one shotted by the boss or something..the team has to scramble to pick me up and all the while no ones getting healed....and what happens if no one can get me?...

sure one of the dps' who also have an armory could switch to healing for the rest of that particular fight...but most..and yes MOST will refuse to do it..cause they are score card chasing and they know the minute they have to change on the fly now their damage starts to go down so then you are left with a wipe..where as the odds of both healers going down at the same time arent as great..i mean it happens but there less of a chance of no heals if there are two healers opposed to solo....

i really think more healers should flat out say no to solo healing..just plain and simply refuse in pug groups... yes you might be able to do it but there is no benefit from doing it..so you beat the content in 20 mins opposed to 25 cause you picked up a 4th dps who is probably getting carried anyway... more then half the time the 3rd dps is being carried as well...im not trying to offend healers when i go into a group and see they have 1 healer and suggest want me to go healer even though i shouted dps... a lot of times they feel offended... my real reasoning is more that it will help make a smoother run....

i really think tanks shot themselves in the foot when they started allowing 1 tank runs...i almost feel like because of at the time we had the need greed pass and the community most the time ran the rule of need on current role stance only... and this meant tanks got all tank drops to them self unless "ninja looted".... so in the tanks opinion eliminating a person of the same class helped get you the drops you needed eliminating opposition...and at that time with these older raids the enrage timers on boss fights werent as fast as they are in something like nexus and paradox....

they need to make content where 2 tanks are needed again... they attempted it yet again with making us split up into two teams and one team going to ranx/mogo the other team going to metropolis and people instantly got around that...splitting the team up seems to not be working in the ways they have been trying
anyway thats my rant of the day

If it works as they think it will, it'll slow down the game and kill the enjoyment of many of their hardcore, dedicated players, and they'll leave.

That's the best-case scenario right now.

There's also the risk that the whole weapon-switching mechanic is a glitchy lag-fest that turns players off in droves.

I'd be absolutely elated if they came back a week from now and said that based on player feedback, they're dropping the whole thing. Sadly, I doubt this'll be the case. At least I pre-ordered Destiny.

So we will just make everyone exactly the same? How is that the answer? All they needed to do was buff might damage by 20% or add precision based combos for every powerset. For instance - if you cast Vine lash in nature, you could press another button to combo into briar, but it would be precision based DOT.

This? This completely changes the game, and literally no one is going to know how to fight for several weeks. After playing the game the same way for 3 years, this is a drastic change, and honestly, belongs in DCUO 2, not this game.

Yeah, Brice, the more I read about this, the more I see it as an either/or. Heck, it's a purchase, like a powerset, so it's not a game-wide, mandatory implementation. I need to see the whole thing in detail (I missed the stream, and only know what I've read), but it sounds like you may be able to access the innates without even utilizing the combo system. Therefore, you can play like you currently do, but have a more worthwhile SP sink. People who aren't as fast fingered will also be able to play in a way that allows them to be competitive. Interested to see the whole thing in detail.

This new mechanic is way to confusing. Doesnt seem enticing at ALL.

QUESTION: could you get the crit chance from the master weapon combo by doing a cast time power such as mass det, fire burst, and such? Or it must be instant powers?

Edit: If fire burst works for the crit, does all tics crit?

This might be the first game in the history of video games to make its dedicated players absolutely dread an oncoming DLC.

What if we just got some new content and went along making minor tweaks here and there to mechanics which are more/less very fun and enjoyable for folks?

All this DLC is looking to be, is Elder Scrolls Online. Because that's where everyone is going to be going.

I dont think so, I just dont think itll have any affect on the current "hardcore" base in the least

At first glance, when I look at this, all I see is more SP for me to spec into...Im not interested in the mechanic at all because I dont think it'll be any better then what we have now