Stats Revamp 1.3!

dont just let cooldowns be for you to sell TC for cooldown shortening mods...
THE GAME DOESNT NEED THOSE COOLDOWNS¨!!!

I do think NPC's are way too weak.
Buff them please and reverse that healer bonus reduction please.

So i wasn't able to post till today, here are some general thoughts about this version of the revamp:

- Damage from NPC´s got nerfed too much, at the point that one group on Test did Olyr without a healer.

- Healing effects from abilities got butchered because of the reason above. I´ts like they are trying to tell the healers that they can spam healing abilities now (because several cooldowns were reduced) but the catch is that the potency of the healing abilities is pathetic now (looking at you Galvanize...)

- Precision damage vs Might damage. The gap is ridiculous right now (well since the beggining of the revamp to be fair) since Might damage it´s far superior. I think that a good way to balance this without breaking anything is tweeking the numbers of the personal weapon buffs (Wired, Weapon of Destiny, etc.) Making it a 50% precision buff and only a 15% buff to abilities (or either remove the Buff to abilities althogether) and making the effect last the whole duration of the cooldown (12 secs).

- CR relevancy. Yup i was on that Paradox Wave run that is online, and i think that since the CR differential is gone right now, people should be rewarded with the proper rewards for run any content, because difficulty level trough tiers it´s more blurred now, and depends of the mechanics of the instance itself, nor CR or stats.

- Last but not least, #StatsMatter. I really don´t see great difference between the damage at max gear compared to 166 or below; Neither i feel great impact coming from SP, this means that there is little incentive to grind more SP. My conclusion overall is that you developers are catering (again) to the casual crowd, and that, to me at least is pretty dessapointing.

All in all, this version (while having good tweeks here and there) feels too easy across the board, more adjusments need to be done to please both of your crowds (Casual-lazy / hardcores/tryharders).

Well said and oh how I miss the days of old.

what ? since 1.0 it is a weapon buff only meaning dps buff only and never buffed abilities

33% Precision buff AND 33% dmg buff (from abilities)

All the weapon buffs are precision and weapon DPS buffs. They don't affect tray abilities at all.

It doesn´t seem to me that way, i used to clip Arc with wired and then hit DoT powers like Egen or Electrocute to get more dmg from the dots (since they last longer and would take more benefit from the short 6 secs window of wired)

no... it says 33% dps ( damage per second... which u can find on the weapon stats) , thats it !

Yeah, it's for weapon only. Avair mentioned in the power cost thread that you should never use it for PftT option. Only if you are using your weapon. So it's okay for weapon only and hybrid.

I went now and tested with Weapon of Destiny followed by DoT powers, seems no difference on Might dmg. You & Karasawa were right, i stand corrected.

I still agreed with the gist of your post.

Thx mate

I think that Stats should matter more: Probably giving more points for each SP spent on Power, Might, Precision, Vitalization and Restoration because I don't see any difference in my Weapon when I put 20 or 30 or 40 SP on Precision for example. Same thing in Healer side.

I had to think about this for a while, but I may as well use this opportunity to give my general feedback on v1.3 so far.

In v1.2 I think our characters generally felt weak, and apparently that was due to the emphasis on 2x4. Heals had limited range and strength, power-out was limited, etc because, in essence, there were meant to be 2 of you doing that same job in a raid. So that's why we felt like half a Healer or half a Controller. I didn't like that feeling.

It's a bit better in v1.3 but something still feels off. Avair mentioned in a previous thread that he generally wanted to eliminate 1-shots. Thus, NPC damage has gone down and health has gone up, and that trend seems to continue in 1.3. However, this trend also makes it so our heals and damage have gone down and now they feel super low. I mean casting Rejuvenate or Bioelectric Surge doesn't tax my power at all but I do have to cast a million of them to get anyone's health up (exaggeration).

It's the same with damage; I can PftT just fine using 1 low, 1 med, 1 high but my 1 low feels like it hits as hard as a wet noodle. It uses so little power that it's essentially free damage now, which also worries me (for PvP).

I think these trends go against what the community expects in terms of skill. For example, the community doesn't view someone spamming Shockwave or Transmutation over and over again skilled. And the community views a skilled Healer as someone who can make snap decisions quickly and correctly while under pressure. Using the right heal that will reach the right group members in time to make their health bars shoot from 0 to 100 and snatch them right out of the jaws of death (exaggeration but you get the point).

We can't do that anymore on Test. There are no 1-shots or near 1-shots so what is there left to make a skilled Healer feel skilled? It's just spamming heals over and over again in a rote manner. We don't necessarily feel weak anymore, but we do feel bored.

I think the Devs should reverse course on trying to eliminate 1-shots. Bring NPC damage back up, like way up. Bring the intensity of our abilities back up to compensate. Let our health and power bars shoot up and down like they're spazzing out. Keep us on our toes. That's what people mean when they say speed in combat pacing is one of the draws of this game; we like having to make snap decisions.

I also do think our SP feels devalued a little too much in this version. I understand that more of those missing SP stats just went directly into our gear, but this brings back one problem with CR Differential where gear (and thus CR) was the most important thing affecting our performance. I'd like to request that the Devs continue devaluing Power gained through SP while reverting the other stats so it feels more impactful putting a ton of Stat Points into Might, Precison, Vitalization, or Restoration.

A game without risk of failure is not a game at all.

Thank you for the reply. It was very thought out explanation of a response that is very lacking by some feedback to this update.

I do view the same way you do. I may not agree with some of the points you made completely, but the points are spot on for how I feel.

This whole update was designed to force a 2x4 makeup. That you could never accomplish your role by yourself. Essentially nerfing the player and forcing a required role. They relented on this and decided that was just not a good direction to force. Which elated me in that regard, because I still feel complexity of the content should dictate the group makeup.

On live, I'll give a mostly unbiased opinion of what is wrong. (I say mostly, because it is still an opinion and opinions can never be unbiased.)

Damage:
I get it, we had this always going up thing. It was an idea to prevent the player from being frustrated by the idea of a "nerf". This is where the mistake of AMs happened and the mistake of GU47 happened. Instead of clipping it to a specific method, we went up. In doing so there was this always going up issue. It worked "mostly", because "most" of the power sets were pretty even. Outliers exhisted either due to the type of damage they can produce or players figuring out exploits that were generally unintended.

Content's design is around burn and more burn. Which leads to stacking damage. Which results in what we have now. Which is very finite in content. Avair said that they needed to change this because they could only do so much with content.

Power:
We had no cap preT5. So if they went up, PoT would be the only thing necessary to power our bars. They introduced a power consumption based on CR. They drastically reduced the power consumption based on CR. They introduced AM power mechanics. All this flopping around causes a dislocation of efficiency. I still think power should be on us, but that is personal belief.
After GU36, they had to make all powers have some sort of effect that was similar to light, rage, and celestial's combos. With how power works, that's impossible, so they introduced a power back mechanic.

Restoration:
In T5 they added more resto to compensate for damage spikes. Of course there were too much damage, so if the healer couldn't heal it in time, it didn't matter. So restoration is just too much. Having so much restoration means solo healing. (Plus power back mechanic in bug form.)



I think these 3 points are the biggest issues we have on live that they were attempting to tackle.

What we got on test from 1.0, 1.2, 1.3, is inching up. They are afraid to go too far because if it goes outside of what they intended they would get more backlash than what they have now.

My opinion on what we have now can only be described by the use of the word "awkward". I know there is some aspects that we have to adjust to. As everything that changes requires, but it just looks like they are pulling the rug out and expecting us to stay standing.

There is some things that I really like. Auto PoT, the Power Tree changes, Stat Points, and removal of one hit wonders. (AM damage. I like AMs, but they were very restrictive.) But there are things just don't make sense. Aside from their intended 2x4 forced makeup, power feed is just really borked. We have powers that are completely being replaced or adjusted when they didn't really need to be. The only thing I can describe for this, they don't want to waste what they changed.

I really think that in the last 6 years of the games life, we of course had changing parts, but this really "feels" awkward of a change. Like it's not necessary to mess with cooldowns and power costs, especially now that they stepped away from a forced 2x4 makeup. I really do want to see what the build they have now behind the scenes would be like with live cooldowns and how the powers work. (DoTs or PIs as an example.)

I also agree with you on player "perception" of other players. They see a spam and think they aren't holding their weight. So there is discourse within groups. They will use any method to alienate other players. Which makes this update even more of a problem. I already see players in game that don't frequent the forums talking about what they expect with the update and what they will do to players because of "x". The way power is now, it's better for the troll's job, but it wont be better for the troll in a pug. There is just going to be a lot of problems on live that we could avoid.

TL;DR I feel like they don't need to change it that much and are doing it because they already started to. Which just frustrates the player.

Yes, that reminds me of another thing. I think you and I would agree that everyone should be responsible for their own power and we'd like to see Controllers have absolutely nothing to do with being power batteries. But I think it's clear at this point that that's not going to happen.

As long as Controllers have power dumps like Defibrillator and Psychic Empowerment then pugs will expect that it's the Controller's job to give them the majority of their power.. except those abilities are only giving out pitiful amounts of Power right now on Test. It's going to be a painful experience watching pugs blame their Controllers when they run dry and the Controllers having no idea why their defib barely does anything.

I think we just need to bite the bullet on this one. I think the lesser evil is just having Controllers capable of noticeably boosting everyone's power-out in a significant way.

I also agree that seeing abilities totally changed "just because" has been stressful and vexing. I already wrote a whole post about it last round though so I won't rehash it.