Stats Revamp 1.3: Electricity

WELL said!

Not saying I am agreeing or disagreeing but if Tesla Ball had lets say a 3 second cool down and did half the damage would it not be just as strong as it is now with a 6 second cool down simply because you can cast it twice in the same time interval? Personally it makes sense to me that all the powers with a power cost of 100 do the same damage and have the same coold down...the same would apply to a 200 power cost and a 300 power cost. It would make more sense, it would be more consistent, and easier to maintain balance over all. Especially if they tiered powers had the same animation times. It would make for a uch more fluid game overall. IMO

However, I would argue that a 6 sec cooldown is very reasonable. If Tesla Ball had a 3 sec cooldown and did half the damage it would have the same damage potential, true, but it would also cost double the power just to maintain that same damage potential.

This.

I to am concerned about the cooldowns on the dots and being able to apply them when necessary. When moving from set of adds to set of adds the dots always NEED to be ready to use just like how nature is on live, you never have a problem applying them on new groups or at boss fights when new adds join but with 12 second cooldowns your dots aren't aways ready and thats a big issue.

I did a write up very similar to this topic on nature in the testing feedback section. We've been down this road before with dot powers and this is why v-bolt and harvest where made to refresh dots. Electric never got fine tuned though and still had cooldown issues on egen and having to stack it or use eburst and then loose out on a burst power and cause of that elec suffered and that should have been corrected over two years ago but for some reasons nature and elec were left to die

Now with the cooldowns being longer and shorter and dealing more and less damage and the power stuff those rules are going to need to be broken a bit or exceptions will have to be made for dot powers to work correctly and efficiently. Egen needs to have a near instant cooldown and instead of vbolt being a dot it should be returned similar to how it works on live where it will create a dot if targets are electrified and spread/refresh that dot and the pi to other enemies in range. Now the change to vbolt from live i would like to see is it spreads and refreshes the egen dot also. On live it only refreshes egen on targets that already have it but wont spread it to other enemies putting the player in sometimes the never ending dot setup battle and thats another place electric starts to suffer.

So at this point Egen and you can say Arch lighting (cause it electrifies enemies which also needs a bit of a cooldown reduction) are your 2 dots so far and V-bolt spreads the electrified pi and also creates a dot if targets are electrified and refreshes and spreads egen too. Also it deals a bit of burst damage on the cast and has a almost instant cooldown so the player is always able to spread/refresh when needed.

Now for Electrocute this is a simple one. I think the damage up time should stay the same 12 second duration but the cooldown be lowered to 6 or 8 seconds allowing it to be 100% up time similar to the changes we made to natures swarm where it has a 15 second up time but a 12 second cooldown. This would cut players some slack when moving from set of adds to set of adds also cause it will be available to use more often and make it more efficient at boss fights.

I don't see a problem with powers that inflict dots having almost instant cooldown (as long as they do no burst damage they only apply a dot) cause theres no benefit to casting a dot over on a target that already has that dot applied all that is is a loss in dps. These suggested changes allow players to set their dots up on any target they come across and thats how it should be.

Look at how Nature functions its the perfect example of how a dot power should work, dots always ready to use, harvest spreads and refreshes, its a simple formula. We've been down this road before with the dot powers and changes were made to things like harvest and vbolt refreshing and other things for a reason, lets not take these things away and travel back down roads we've already been. When vbolt and harvest didn't refresh nature and elec where in a constant setup battle while other powers bursted everything down and that resulted in the other powers surpassing what these two powers could do cause of constant setting up. No one wants to spend all their time in a instance constantly setting up dots nor is that efficient or does it do good damage doing that. Don't go back down this road and don't keep or bring back problems that have been hindering elec for years.

Electric as it stands on test is okish at the moment but i'm still able to do better with other powers except atomic, i haven't really narrowed that power down yet. The power costs on the inputs of the combos really kill the usability of combos and i'd like to see that go away and only a power cost on the initial hit but thats another thread.

That is a fair point, however if the power cost to damage to cooldown was balanced across the board it would be a mute point.

Where u been at bruh?? I need you and aqua on the front lines with me... These are the most crucial times that will define our power for the rest of the years to come..

Im trying to tell the rest of these hard working testers that DOTS SHOULD NOT be graded the same way as BURST.. So if we are asking for lower cooldowns it should NOT reduce DAMAGE bcuz its DAMAGE OVER TIME.. I dont understand what people are thinking.. We are treating DOTS as if they are BURST, so as a result they feel if we reduce the COOLDOWNS the damage has to be reduce.. DOTS are not BURST.. THey cannot be MEASURED and scaled the same way.. Thus why it took the devs a couple of years to finally get to ELECTRIC.. BURST can reach maximum damage at quicker pace than DOTS, and for that we SHOULD NOT be scaling damage at the SAME CURVE we Grade BURST damage...

DOTS are INFERIOR to BURST.. Once we can all understand that, then we can work on how to improve DOTS

Well obviously the Devs understand that or else they wouldn't have made Electrocute do so much more overall damage than Voltaic Bolt and Electrostatic Bomb. Honestly, I wouldn't care if the devs reduced cooldowns across the board as long as they didn't take something else away from us in return. Also, keep in mind that the devs said that they would reevaluate cooldowns in the next version.

Well said karasawa!!

I've been lurking but not posting much cause I'm a bit frustrated when I see such easy and clear solutions to things overlooked and just some of the changes in general baffle me. I've always been one of the guys that said this is gonna happen if you do this and in the end I always get to say "I told you so" and it's just very frustrating to always be right but hardly listened to, but anyway I hope to see more comunication from the devs and more positive changes for the dot powers.

Like you said dot powers are different and some of the rules that they are going with need to be bent a little in order for electric to function efficiently and still keep pace with other powers. We had the dot powers so close to being great but they just refused to up the damage percents the dots did for some reason and most of the changes here are a step backwards for dots. Things like vbolt refreshing really need to be taken into consideration.

I don't think Voltaic Bolt should refresh dots and I hope they take it away from Nature too. Hate me for that if you want but it's boring and encourages you to ignore the 5 other abilities on your loadout for the majority of an engagement. It's also ridiculously power efficient to the point of imbalance.

Agreed. Its an AM thing, no need for it here.

That is not a AM thing it was there long before Am's and even WM. Nature's harvest refreshed dots since the beginning of the game.

I don't agree. Sure its power efficient but having to keep setting up dots has shown to hinder electric in the past and nature on single target before harvest was changed. I'm trying not to repeat the same mistake that where corrected in the past.

Disagree if you want but if you take a look back before those changes elec and nature weren't all to hot. I remember even before gu36 electric being one of the worst dps powers cause of the constant need to set things up. The proof is in the past.

So youre cool with waiting another 12 seconds to cast DOTS again? Usually by that time you cast the 2nd rotation of DOTs the adds already dead.. Then when the second wave of ADDS are pulled, youre stuck with cooldowns thus rendering us useless bcuz we have to wait.. Keep in MIND DPS stands for DAMAGE PER SECOND.. To maximize DPS you must utilize every frame, every second to MAXIMIZE and OPTIMIZE every second spared.. DOTS have a slower acceleration. With all that being said..

But im curious, as to what is ur solution KARASAWA?? Leaving it as is?

And during all that setup electric did no burst damage just applied dots that have no initial hit or burst. So while elec was setting up others where putting in work.

The whole point of the refresh is to give elec and nature that time after setup to get in some burst damage to equal out the time it took to set things up and catch up on damage. Without the refresh like i've said its just a never ending cycle of setting up dots and that has shown from the past to not fair well for the powers. I don't know why some can't grasp this concept??

You know whats a AM thing.....power back

I've trolled for Nature DPS back before AM and WM and I don't recall their optimal DoT loadout being all that power efficient.

And to touch on this sure you can say its power efficient but with refresh or without your still going to use the same amount power cause you'll still be doing a weapon attack and a power regardless of refresh or not but with the refresh you'll actually get to do something other then just setup dots over and over. If you want to call something boring setting up dots over and over thats pretty boring and frustrating too and not efficient what so ever. I'd rather set my stuff up then do weapon attacks and burst powers not worry about if my dots are on everything.

Okay, listen. Harvest did not always refresh dots the way it does now. It got that ability in GU32, and I actually felt the same way about it in 2013 as I do now:

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...re-update-feedback.180514/page-5#post-2160592

Prior to GU32 you could not refresh dots on a single target. You could refresh it on groups, but you had to retarget a different enemy every time to do so. Voltaic Bolt did not refresh dots until AMs arrived and I loved old school Electricity way more than AM Electricity.

What you guys are talking about are the inherent strengths and weaknesses of dots.

Strength: Each individual dot ability does more damage than a burst ability but over a longer period of time. And because each individual dot ability does more damage, you then need less power than burst builds to inflict the same amount of damage. Thus, power efficiency is a major strength of dots.

Weakness: The inherent weakness of dots is you get weaker as people gear up due to adds not living as long and your dots not having enough time to do work. You also lose effectiveness when burst builds have more power to inflict more burst. Dots can't do more damage even with more power; they're limited to the length of their dots. At the beginning of content cycles, dots are awesome. By the end (when everyone is geared up) burst is king. You already see this with AMs; when fighting mobs that don't live long, pet powers cannot be beat. It's impossible because pet powers have no startup time. Even if you could immediately spread all your dots to a fresh mob you still would not beat a pet power because you don't have enough TIME for your dots to do work.

So what is the solution? You guys are asking to improve what makes dots good already (power efficiency) and trying to reduce your startup time (refreshing), but this makes the power boring and does not fix your problem. You still wouldn't beat a burst damage power.

What I want for dot powers is the same now as it's always been; give us burst. Let us be well rounded so we can maximize our efficiency in any situation. Old school Electricity had zero burst damage. Stat Revamp Electricity has burst options. Therefore, I'm happy with this product.