Mental AM bugged and over-parsing?

According to the tests made, Mental is fine to me in general, I don't see any real problem but the rotation 3 must be balanced because is really out of your range of 5% +/-. Regarding the rotation 1 and 2 the average damage is according with the risk/reward.

I caught myself accidentally using the 2 in the first 35.5k and of course I end up missing the second time I did it.

Melee-range +/- 5% range is 33725 - 37275
Mid-range +/- 5% range is 28500 - 31500
Full-range +/- 5% range is 24225 - 26775

To say mental is bugged you're basically saying gadgets is also bugged damage value and loadout mechanics are identical ... What is bugged with mental is the troll side invisibility will cut your dom in half and you don't get it back until next instance.

I would say Mental is exactly where it needs to be to compete. A nice balance of risk/reward. Strong, but doesn't always top the the SB, nor does it rank the bottom.

If you're asking for nerfs maybe start with the powers that have been considered OP for the longest time and nothing has changed. (Ice and Gadgets for examples - and Gadgets even got a buff as its last update)

If the Rage sparring target testing vs live results showed us anything, you can only go so far with sparring targets. It's only 1 variable and should not be the end all, be-all. (Rage is now the 2nd least popular power for end-game players, before Electricity after the update)

I agree with everything here. Hopefully they'll take a look.

Stop complaining like Bit&@ and play the game.

Hey there. Thanks for the feedback. You are correct that the mechanics are almost identical but there is a noticeable difference in damage. Gadgets doesn't parse as high as Mental does and Mental is currently the only powerset that can parse as high or higher than 39k-40k average for 5 minutes. That's where the issue lies in. I'm not necessary asking for a blatant nerf without any data, I'm actually showing the data on why it's not balanced. Just something I saw and felt like I needed to report. If you know of any other powers over parsing please let me know.

Hi there. Nice to hear your insight. I'm not necessary asking for nerfs but I'm just simply reporting on data that I have collected and how it doesn't match up to the agreed baseline figures for balance. Unfortunately in your case, Ice and Gadgets already parse at baseline levels, Ice parses at 33k-34k melee and Gadgets around 36-37k melee which is respectable and justified. Mental is the only powerset that out parses every other power in every range by an amount greater than 5% which causes imbalances as according to the developers. That's where the issue lies in.

And off topic with Rage but to be honest, Rage is actually parsing fine around baseline levels though in my opinion could use an extra buff to it's damage to bring it up a little higher to 37k average DPS. And unfortunately there is no other way to perfect controlled testing and the goal of these balance passes are to address sustained DPS balancing. What you are seeing with Rage is the reality that Rage shines in areas where sustained DPS is needed and in most raids that people are comparing each other with; are seeing a lot of burst DPS shine against trash mobs and such. Rage and any other combo AM is basically straight sustained DPS with a small set up time. So pretty much you're very rarely going to top the charts against low health enemies and trash mobs but you're going to do balanced damage and good damage against bosses.

Hi there, thanks for commenting. I believe your assessment of complaining is incorrect. I'm just simply reporting on data that I have collected out of testing. According to the collected data, the powerset is parsing incorrectly at all ranges in ways that exceed the 5% threshold and at levels no other powerset can reach. Feel free to report your reproducible data as well and see if there is consistency. Thanks for the feedback again.

Exactly, I play with mental all the time and it fluctuates from day to day. There is no reason to even address this issue. There are bigger fish to fry and mental is not one of them.

Aside from other AMs under performing at the moment, this is the only power that is over performing in sustained DPS and it shows in high tier content. I would say this is something that can be fixed in a hotfix. You should re-look at my numbers at the first post very carefully. It's incredibly exceeding the baseline goals, and you guys are okay with that? I will sit down and parse each powerset's best rotation and none in a controlled setting can reach the levels Mental has in every range. I can prove that with data.

I have realized that there are plenty of upset Mental users in here and all I ask is that you guys keep an open mind and just look at the numbers/data/facts, and it's blatantly telling us to re-look at the damage levels. If it was brought down to Gadget's max level then it would be perfect. Mass Terror with only Grandeur shortcut, is exceeding an EMP Stealth/Distract rotation and that's fine for you guys? For another powerset to work even harder with more risk to match another identical powerset? Like let's be real.

My CR is 126. 10349 might. all the proficiencies, 160 sp, r&d mods etc.

Regarding the variance topic, if someone is showing 20% ranges, they're doing something wrong. If the rotations are performed correctly, they'll be ranges much less than that. Mental doesn't strictly have unique ranges compared to other powersets. It's similar to Gadgets.

Using the rotation & loadout below,

My first sample set,


My average was 41,233.

My second sample set,


My average was 41,877.

My third sample set,


The average above was 43,009. That's between 21% to 22% above baseline.

My fourth sample set included Mass Hysteria and produced 42,445 average.


I have pictures of my tests with Gadgets EMP III. I performed 4 sets of 30 samples with EMP III, Gauss, Fear Gas, CFoam, Distract, EMP Stealth & Stealth has Battle Display inside. No Bunker Buster was used in this sample. I'll get to that perhaps tomorrow. I did EMP transitioning out of Stealth and performed EMP from within Stealth on the last sample. I'll get to the reason why later.


38,025


36,873


37,627


36,798



Clearly using the risky loadout version for Gadgets does no where near as much as Mental's MT III. Regardless of risk, which these 2 powersets are very similar in (it doesn't matter that Mental's resonance sets up the AM, it's advantage is that it produces automatic 50% PI buffs on it's burst abilities while resonance is up & MT registers instance damage), one is performing too high. 6 to 9% even 10% would be fine. 15%+ is clearly unbalanced.

Mental is currently superior for baseline reasons. It consistently grants crit Mass Terror's from within Invisibility (EMP from Stealth doesn't grant consistent crits despite the crit bonus), Mass Terror does 10% more damage than EMP despite mid range and far range registering base damage exactly the same.


Using the loadout below for midrange with Mass Terror III

My first set sample,


35,241 is my average for midrange using MT III. That's 17% above baseline.

My second sample set,


34,244 is my average here. That's about 14% above baseline.

38,277 average


38,464 average





I'll post my pictures for Gadgets later but these are my averages.

EMP II GG, FG, CFoam Distract EMP Battle Display at MELEE range
34,749

EMP I GG, FG, CFoam EMP Intimidation Battle Display at MELEE range
33,055



Even using Mass Terror II, the "safe" loadout for Mental, performs damage that Gadgets EMP III, using all the shortcuts and 3Pis produces in average damage.

At midrange, Mass Terror does
34,052


& 33,901


which is basically Melee damage range.


Mental was not tested correctly in the past. I did notice that aside from 10% more base damage on Mass Terror, using MT from within Invisibility grants a consistent crit due to the bonus crit from Invisibility form. This allows a high percentage of Mass Terror's to hit for high damage even if the normal hitsw from Invisbility are non-modifier buffed.

More will be added at a later time. I suggest players who can provide parsers & perform the test correctly posts to help the devs adjust this asap instead of having people reply with opinions that have no ideal testing methods. #'s bear more creditably.

Even adjusting Mental more towards what Gadgets can do in terms of damage from the big hitters through short cuts, which many players desired in the first place, would still make Mental viable. In ways, Mental is easier to use than Gadgets AM but they are similar. Numbers are being provided so that Mental is in line with something like Gadgets (Advanced PI AM). They are not being displayed so it becomes inferior.

FotM what?

Rokyn thanks for this testing and showing how strong Mental is, but my $$$ is on the fact this was done on purpose by DBG to get players to spend $$$ on respect tokens. You know how the mentality of the community is, if a power is hitting harder everyone will follow suit to it due to the advantage said power has as a DPS. This does explain why I have seen a recent increase in the number of mental players.

I swore I saw a few of those Earth and Ice DPS players who stated they were said power day one as Mental now and they are probably saying the same thing again. LOL....

I wonder if Atomic will get a similar treatment in the future. The devs have not fixed the Atomic glitch yet either.

Mental 3 burst loadout have a lot more risk than gadget 3 burst loadout, so it should do more damage. It's ironic that some gadget users are campaigning to get mental 3 burst loadout nerfed when gadgets has been the top power for like the last 6 months. Now it's ok to have a power balanced around a 3 burst loadout when it wasn't before

Risk ? What risk ? Don't talk about risk when it comes to power sets when Pets go from 0-100 with no "risk" involved. I'm still trying to figure out what risk mental has that gadgets doesn't. If risk was a factor in damage then Light and Rage would be the strongest.

Mental loose it's am power back mechanic, it loose the am damage too. Gadgets don't. Celestial would, not rage or hl. Rage has the best melee range mechanic

Pet mechanic is more like 0-50 since it does half of tge damage, and idk if players know this, but any mechanic that cc players, cc pets too

We also must have in consideration that Mass Terror is pratically an instant damage while EMP is more or less 2 sec to apply himself.

In that case Mental can be 2 seconds faster than Gadgets and this must be fixed, probably for this reason take more damage?

You can get very similar numbers using 3 emp's with gadgets and i've brought that up before but people went nuts on me. I see the dark did some test with gadgets but wasn't using the most ideal loadout, you can get some consistent 39k's with gadgets prob more if i really played around with it.

Both exceeded the target numbers, also some powers that are inline like munitions do a little to good in content cause of how they work and the baseline for muni should be brought down a bit but these are all fine tuning issues and i'd like to see the powers that are really under preforming get some love before we start going back over powers that have already been gone over 3-5 times.

Said the same thing in the gadgets thread a couple months back, and was ran out the thread

That's kind of my point. If Ice, Gadgets, and Rage are all "parsing fine at around baseline" they'd be somewhere near the same in damage on the SB and Mental would always be the top of the SB.

What I'm seeing is Ice/Gadgets are relatively close in performance, and Mental close in damage to them in content.

Even if you remove the "burst" damage advantage that those first 3 powers have against trash mobs, if Rage has good sustained damage (not bursty) then it would be matching a similar consistent-damage type power, such as Hard Light, but I don't see that.

Mental is fine. And Hopefully all this wouldn't matter anyway when they bring back stat differential
#statsmatter #feats #skillpoints