Stats Revamp 1.4 - Nature Feedback

Off topic but....

Out of all the feedback I've seen for the past three years; today is the day that truly has my attention. Nature changes and CrappyHeals' input. You better put in great feedback, bud. The floor is all yours. Let the testing begin!

Listen im so excited i don't know what to do with myself haha. I feel all these years of me blabbing they were secretly listening and put it all together in this update

Edit: There might not even be to much feedback needed other then a few bugs. From what i've been going through nature seems to be in a pretty good spot. I'm proud of what they have done. Crappy Heals saying positive stuff...thats weird i know lol

With regards to StatsRevamp, there is supposed to be an overall balancing plan that provides details on how certain types of powers are supposed to be balanced and what type of damage output they are supposed to do. If you make the assumption that there are overall balancing guidelines, you'd expect to see temporary pets doing around the same levels of damage. So let's use Ice's Snow Devil as an example. It is 300 base power cost with a 12 second cooldown. Watch here to see what kind of damage it does at CR 177:


Barely 1,000 damage per second.

If you go through the trouble of setting up the PI and recasting Snow Devil as quickly as possible so you have two out, you'll get 3k damage per second at CR 177.

When you go from that to seeing Swarm's damage output, it is fairly stark difference.

If Swarm's damage output is intended, that's cool. I'd just like to see temporary pets in other powersets be more useful. Suppressor Turret is still an ineffective, expensive pet that can kill you. Snow Devil is very expensive to keep up for the small damage output contribution it provides.

I agree that Nature could use some more burst options.

It is hard to properly evaluate the powerset right now with several powers not working correctly.

Also had this happening. As did a league mate. The taking dmg when using savage growth.

Bug Report
The description for Swarm Shield in healer role says the following:

"[Healer Role]
Shield yourself and the three most injured group members"

Playing through solo content in healer role, I'm not seeing any damage absorption when I cast Swarm Shield. It is like the shield doesn't exist.

It works ok in Damage role.

I see where your coming from and yea the other pets do stink compared to swam ( it think they need a bit of a buff imo. The cooldown on the gad turret is a bit long). Right now I was just looking at it from a overall standpoint of what one power can do vs another but if your looking at it from pet vs pet sure swarm is much better then the rest.

If swarm is brought down the dot damage is going to have to be brought up which i wouldn't be apposed of cause in order for me to match what i can do with electric the damage swam does is needed. 3 dots just don't cut it. You kinda need swam at this moment. Man i edited that alot cause i was on my phone lol

But then on the other hand swam is good cause of the lack of burst options nature has so its a tuff trade off. I want to run a few oly runs using different things and wait till everything is working properly to really put in solid suggestions.

Pheromones: 1-3
Flourish: 20-30 per each unique pheromone
Bloom: 18-26 per each unique pheromone
Metabolism: 10-18 (single tick)
Blossom: 48-59
Blossom Leverage: 10-18 per each unique pheromone
Cross Pollination: 24-32 multiplier of 0.05 per ally (pets and NPC's limit of 16)
Regeneration: 110-121
Roar: 20-28
Savage Growth: 12-16

I'm about to log in to do some testing, but have a suggestion after reading the notes. I wholeheartedly approve of bringing form combos in line with existing combo executions, but why not maintain some unique animations as well? All legends iconics use standard combo patterns AND have some unique moves-- all executed by the familiar combos. So, the first two clicks for wolf could be the swipes instead MA kicks, insect could still barf out an attack somewhere in the HB rotation, etc. The animations exist, so where's the downside to swapping them with the standard moves as a means to keep the forms cool and unique?

I switched from an ice dps to a nature dps earlier today thinking I was going to go back to an ice dps shortly, lesson one: never just come to assumptions. I'm testing out nature in test now; my jaw dropped when I did 4.5k more damage per second as a nature dps than I could as an ice dps.
Edit: Now I need to see how Munitions ends up when it goes on test before I switch to it on live.

They wanted to drop hive mind. So they took the healing component off of harvest to keep people from wanting to use it. Im pretty sure they probably dropped the CC aspect of it as well so ultimately it makes no difference. Im pretty sure it was just a spot filler at this point.

I agree this seems pointless, separating a move out into two individual moves when the one already did both I find highly inefficient when another more useful thing could have been put in its place and harvest left alone.

Here's a little feedback:

1) Flourish's CD seems a little long.
2) Insectoid form is completely useless now.

Can't wait to see what you make of the power set and hear your thoughts once it's had it's first full run on test , a lot of people have been waiting for it for a couple of years

Bug: Along with Savage Growth, ROAR also does no damage to enemies (Wolf form), and inflicts damage on the player.

Question: are the "weapon" attacks in forms benefiting from Carnage?

I enjoyed running a plant-based DPS with about a 70:30 tray/weapon hybrid. It was great being able to use some of of my former favourite powers that had to be given up for the sake of AMs. I then ran a forms-based build. The combos are good, simply because they are familiar and offer more variety than the former ones did. MA is definitely weird for the wolf form... too much fancy spinning and such. It's cosmetic, I suppose, but transformations should be about becoming something other after all. I would love to see some unique moves slipped into the familiar combos (I should note my mistake from my first post: the first MA attacks are punches; my point stands that these could/should be claw swipes).

Remove bug form. It's pointless.

Ok so here begins my initial impressions.....So im actually very pleased, nature stacks up very well to the other powers and is kinda versatile.

So first thing i noticed was the lack of burst options for when you need quick damage but there are some combos you can use to net you some good burst damage. Swarm, voracious, serpent call all seem to be pretty good options for adds.

Next the dots, its fantastic that you can still spread and refresh dots but the dots are pretty weak even when all 3 are stacked but it seems like a fair trade off to me considering how strong swarm is. If the dots were any better and swarm was that good you could stack them all together and that would be a bit on the "OP" side. Another thing is savage growth went back to melee range so thats a power you always can't 100% count on using and back in the day if you couldn't use all 3 dots nature just stunk, but now if you can't apply SG you can just sub it out for swam and still do great cause swarm is actually good. Its nice to not be forced to have to get the SG dot on to do well cause in things like SM or elite content getting melee range isn't always going to work.

Another thing i like is vine lash now has a initial burst (single target) which is great cause setup is what gets you with dots and also now that it has a initial burst that gives you a more viable option for a good single target build for if you want to single out a boss and not spread your poisons to anyone else. Thumbs up for that!!!.

Roar being A bursty aoe dot thats also refreshable is a nice options for adds. While its not true burst it goes along with the dot theme nature has going. (only the dot is refreshable not the burstyness for those who haven't tested and are reading this)

Now lets talk swarm. So my first impressions were "hey this is pretty strong" but then after playing in some content and messing around at the dummies i think its actually ok and makes up for the lack of damage the dots do and also gives you a good option for burst while not really being burst and sticking with the dot theme. it was mentioned in a earlier post that swam was better then other re-castable pets and it is i'm not gonna lie and i totally get where Penryn was coming from and agree to a point but from a overall dps standpoint i get just about the same numbers with elec and nature although elec has some better burst options. Also i can push elec a bit more in some situations if i use 2 high power cost burst abilities and nature doesn't really have options like that (kinda but not really) but its fine with me you can still do very well from the things i've run and done so far.

Overall i'm very pleased dps wise but I still have a lot more testing to do and also some things need to be fixed before i make any solid suggestions on things. I'm going to post some data from a few test i did using a few things to show how 3 dots and other things stack up against each other.

The damage on it is very very cost effective in power.
At 176 cr, I was consistently getting 20k/s second. Which has me concerned with Gadgets. Which I could, no matter how hard I tried to work with rotations and PIs be able to break 16k/s. With or w/o a troll.

Anyways, not bad, have not tried form changes, was trying a human form rotation. I'm not a big fan of form changes, but I'll try them out tomorrow.

I'm not much of a nature enthusiast, test server was actually the only time I really broke into it dps wise, so i'm not sure how it stacks up against it's live brethren, so bare with me on the feedback if something seems off lol.

Im very pleased with the damage on the 35%ers, impaling thorns is hitting like a truck and with a relatively low cooldown you can use it many times before a boss dies. Good job on that.

One thing I am concerned with though, is the lack of a lot of burst options. Voracious plants seems to be the only reliable burst power to spam with your weapon combos. Everything else is a DoT, and a low one at that. Savage growth I feel doesn't do enough damage, especially with it being a hybrid power that does both damage and healing and since you guys buffed the hybrid powers to encourage battle roles, I feel savage growth needs a damage buff. Serpent call could also use a slight buff.

Another thing I don't really agree with, it seems swarm is needed to put out maximum damage with nature, it has 3-4k ticks of damage and lasts a good while, I don't want people to feel like they NEED to have it on their loadout to be competitive.

Anyways, the loadout I settled with after I went through testing as many powers as I could in a struggling oly run, was Briar, VP, Imp thorns, chaotic growth, swarm, and carnage, all clipped with Hold, Hold range on HB. Rotation: solar flare ---> swarm clipped with carnage ---> solar flare ----> briar ----> solar flare -----> VP (rotate the two until carnage is off cooldown). I was prec based with mods and split might/prec specced with SP and did exceptionally high damage in raids. So overall, I'd say im satisfied with nature and will continue to to mess around with it.

Ok so heres a few things i've whipped up quick. Just some examples of where some things stand.

So first up is a 3 dot laodout. SG, VL, Briar, Harvest, Carnage and voracious. Not to hot but thats ok.

Link to this loadouts full data http://www.dcuolog.com/?log=299c0c96

Next 2 dots and Swarm. VL, Briar, Swarm, Harvest, Carnage and Voracious. On par with what i can do with elec.

http://www.dcuolog.com/?log=c16bc8fb

Next up 3 dots in wolf form then swarm and the rest in human. SG,VL,Briar, Swarm, Carnage, Harvest and Voracious. Still close to Elec it actually out did the sheet i'm going to post but its not the best thing elec has especially with limited power.

http://www.dcuolog.com/?log=805db8e2

Now heres a Example of electric to give you a baseline where its at.


This was just to give a example of what another power was doing vs nature. Also like i said you can do a bit better if you subbed out shock for attract and of course it depends on the situation and how you use things and how much power you have and if your troll or trolls are good or not there lots of variables. This data isn't the holy grail just some quick comparisons.

I haven't really tried gadgets to much but when you where getting around 16k where you using PftT or Hybrid?