Test Discussion GU 49: Ice AM Improvements

To add it to this AM it would need to be changed from a channel power to an instant and it's range would have to be increased by a large amount. All this is not even counting the fact that you need to go all the way down a tree you don't really need.

I don't think it needs a wider cone just a longer range.

Arctic Gusts range as it stands right now you can't use it against at tier Hades, Stompa, Superman, Zoom, Aquaman if he has his water funnel, Cerberus, Forge master, Lightray/Steppenwolf and those are just the ones that i can remember there are a lot more that i don't remember.

Gadgets EMP
Rage (All but DB)
Munitions Splosion
Mental Mass Terror
Fire Fireburst
Ice Arctic Gust
Earth Pet
Sorcery Pet
Nature Savage Growth
Electric Electroburst

All require you to get close to do better damage. I think changing the range of Arctic Gust would be a rebalancing issue. They are giving you risk vs reward. And actually options. Otherwise you have Quantum...

Quantum does more damage if you're close to the target as well. Unless you mean Quantum doesn't have any choice between long and shorter range because it's the same power; in that case, carry on.

Yes all power have risk vs reward , after this update quantum will be a tad under about 4 powers , but honestly quantum as a whole the closer u are the more damage you do so it's the same . Ice so far looks like it might be the strongest dps .. I say a wider cone maybe but it's smaller becuse the huge damage it dose .

I found something interesting that I might as well bring up:

The "Arctic Gust" power (while now AWESOME with the new AM changes) can sometimes bug out. If you spam the block (in an effort to cancel the power) and the power itself over and over again while trying to cast it, two of the animation come out of your character. One at your feet and one at your hands. (see below pic)



I can't confirm if this second animation does additional damage or not, but something tells me that it does, as extremely rarely, I've gotten way more damage on a rotation than I should, then everything goes back to normal as if it never happened. I'm thinking that this was because of this particular bug and I just didn't notice in the heat of battle.

Any comments, dev or otherwise?

PS I know it's not a very good image but it's the best I can do because I'm lazy. you try getting a screenshot using the DCUO UI when you have a split second to get what you're after! It's hard!

Due to the steep cone you do 0 dmg if the target decides to fly over the level of your characters head. Personally i find the jumping to hit targets awesome, but then again no other power seems to have this kind of limitation so why not fix it now that devs are looking at ice again?
I have to agree though, if widening the cone seems to be a "nooby" request ( although comparing it to other AM heavy hitters its not ), gust should at least be able to hit 8 targets. I'm pretty sure even your "Ice guy" will enjoy such a useful change.

Giving Gust a longer range will do 1 of 2 things, either cause the devs to lower its output ( nah! ), or if that doesn't happen turn ice in some version of quantum, which is really not necessary as the easiness of quantum is borderline annoying.
Even if widening the cone isn't an option, it should at least be allowed to hit 8 targets.

This tents to happen when you cast Avalanche or Gust and get no power back while you are almost out of power, therefore your power bar is completely empty. Its causes the animation and the dmg to bug out, you do no damage and you cant escape from the animation for a long time ( cant remember how many seconds ) but its way longer than the normal cool-down of the powers. While this happens you are only able to move, nothing more.
Basically if this happens you have to wait it out or die and be revived.

nope quantum does more dmg if it stays at max range near some1 who buffs the crits

When I experience this, it was exactly the same as normal. I wasn't anywhere near out of power and the animation lasted the same amount of time. I had someone PM me saying something similar and I think you are both right but at the same time it feels like this bug is different than it was/is on live servers. Like you said with the circumstances surrounding it, there should be several things in place for this to happen and several ramifications, positive or negative. When this occurs to me, nothing happens except another animation appearing at my feat and (potentially, again, unconfirmed) a little more DPS.

um... kinda? Yes it does more damage when buffed with crits (usually, as you said, by someone in the back and not right next to the boss) but if you have both the close distance AND the crit buff, you do even MORE damage. Regardless, I think we should all agree to disagree about quantum for the time being, and focus on Ice, this being an ice thread and all.

I don't think that's needed at all. While gust is great for short range, if you really need a long range approach or have to switch between short and long range, try keeping Avalanche on your loadout as well. It does almost the same thing, with awesome range, granted it's lower DPS, but that's the price you pay for safety at range.

I am not going to run both Avalanche and Gust on the same loadout that is just a waste of a loadout slot and in turn a loss in dps.

nah, for ice & fire u do better dps if u run with wm on max range ...

I was on test earlier and haven't been able to duplicate it, maybe the change to how power is being restored adds an extra variable on how it happens, hopefully its just a graphical error same as the double ram that you could get from hard light ( very long ago ) if your timing was perfect.

I beg to differ, the Artic Gust range is the appropiate, is the short range version for the power as many other powers have.
Not only that, but saying you can't use it in those contents it's not true, for a reason Is called Mobility focused attacks AM.
What I'm saying it's all about positioning, I've used artic gust in every one of the battles you've said succesfully, it's all about how you position yourself in the fight and how the tank positions the boss.

I think you mentioned earlier about the range of bitter winds, that one is even shorter than Artic gust, reason why i woudln't use it for dps.

12 m range in the game isn't that short is not like you have to hug the boss nor the tank, there is enough space to manage to avoid mechanics or position yourself.

The only real fight where I coudln't use artic gust was in SM for obvious reasons, for then you can swap armories to a WM build or perhaps now it's even better using Avalanche.

This have happened to me on live, it's been going on for a while, and I can confirm it doesnt do more damage, it's the exact same number of ticks in the same range of damage.

It's only an animation bug.

It can happen just while doing normal rotations, if you spam artic gust enough it eventually will show up.

Alright then. We now have a definitive answer. Thank you!

I like the addition of bitter winds and winter tempest to power regen.

I personally would like if other powers could be added to AM For burst ability.

I got couple of videos to share and compare damage.
All of these tests were done with only 3 sp spent to get to solar flame.

So before update 49 I had these two videos, and as you can tell on the parser, Ice was doing better damage while clipping solar flame






Now after this update the tables changed and Ice with full might does better damage.





As you can tell, I believe the damage artic gust is doing right now it's a little bit too much compared to what it used to be.
I'm not against at all with this damage upgrade but I can tell is a little bit too much.


Also if you compare it to fire, ice is doing slighly more:
And no i'm not saying to give more dps to fire, because it's just perfect how it is.



People have talked about the cone of artic gust, while I agree good positioning it's part of it, if the adds are scattered it's sometimes impossible, so I would suggest opening the cone just a little, not too much either but just enough to put it just like Fireburst for example.