QoL Hybrid improvements

I was on test for the last few hours messing around with hybrid rotations using 1 handed. Besides the parses, the one major thing I noticed is that powers like sorc are greatly limited in hybrid play if you have a pet out, because you have to have a slot for the pet, the ability that powers the pet, and the weapon buff, then if you want to use a SC, you have a slot for that leaving only two slots left for abilities to actually clip with.

In general, I think making the weapon buffs apply PI would help give hybrid rotations a little more wiggle room with their loadouts and freedom to use what they want.

Now back to the parses, I went through elec, fire, quantum, nature, sorc, and ice as hybrid, and they were all generally were close to even, only 1-2k DPS within one another, with fire being an outlier that gave me 16.4k DPS (but the loadout had no SC). Lowest being nature with 13.5k (faulty test because savage growth ignores the dominance requirement and knocks the dummies around making it hard to land flip slash on all three targets). These tests were also with no weapon buff from a troll so the number would be higher (not by much, maybe 1k dps at most).

Compared to PFtT, hybrid does slightly less damage overall (excluding combo powers which currently dominate PFTT). To help hybrid out I think what needs to happen is take some damage away from the ranged weapon combos and give it to the melee ranged combos, or just flat out buff melee combos (excluding WM). The damage difference between the two is negligible and makes it irrelevant to even attempt meleeing when you have more to worry about.

Next, adding a weapon buff to hybrid mastery and increasing weapon power regen would bring it more in line with superpowered (I had to use superpowered mastery because the power regen from it is superior to hybrid). Can't really call it "hybrid" when it caters more to might.

Wish this was done a year ago.

first, i want to thank you for the work you did, testing stuff and spending your time with the parcing and giving feedback in the forums. i want to give a few things into consideration, stuff that i think are important factors for your calculation when it comes to differences and comparison of the playstyles given. maybe it helps, i hope so ^^ of course you will know the most of all these factors allready or have readed what i am going to list allready many times before, anyways:

one thing that you can not have possibly included into your test is the factor of RNG, especially meaning here that sparing targets are never reacting to anything you do. they will never block you or counter you otherwise, nor CC effects will break your combo chain for you to have to start your combo from scratch... that especially would affect your results the longer combos you use.

therefore, there must be compensation for such wich is basicly non existent in the current game. as hybrid, you should have a huge advantage by clipping, meaning basicly to do double damage for the weapon attack and at the same time by the power you use... that is what makes it hard to balance...

of course, there is the backlash: you will have to split your stats accordingly: either even by going for precision and might+power (leaving you with less SP for survival stats like health for example) or what is waaay more beneficial: going straight for might and power wich is two stats in one while spending the rest into precision, to have the needed power for you to replenish...

now, if you compair the dammage you do, you might find that you would do more damage anyways, if you don't use any weapon attacks at all (they are basicly only giving you a risk factor for being countered) and if you just throw out tray powers. because powers are stronger than weapon attacks, doing more damage in comparison. not only that, but the buff you get for the hybrid playstyle is might (should be precision) on top of that.

even if clipping would do a little bit more damage for the merit of a double attack, that still leaves you with the counter maneuvers, and if you get a CC effect, you can start the combo again, leading to you basicly loosing time for attacks that are weaker than if you would simply use powers alone. afterall: if you PFTT, there is no backlash for getting interrupted, you just do the next power in your rotation as if nothing happened...

also of course, as you mentioned, the numerous buffs you need to have running at the same time if possible to get even with PFTT (depending on your artefacts and mods), for example: with the super powered playstyle, there is no need for keeping your hit counter up. with the neckmod for weapons, you need to have allways at least the counter over 9. also: the artifacts for power usage are allmost allways granted, while you need to earn them for the precision based artefact effects (counter for example)

then again, there is the timing of the weapon buff itself. if you are not a god and time it allways perfectly, then you got the disatvantage of the buff running out before you land the last hit of you weapon combo (well, that is especially bothersome, the longer your combo gets). happens alot, because you can not just attack: you need to react at your targets actions, wich is delaying your attacks, wich leads to sayd problem... the buff should last longer than its cooldown, that would be my solution if i were a dev ^^

another thing i mentioned many times before and i need to repeat (maybe not for you fatal, but for all forum users that may have missed my oppinion) ^^ : the way that playstyle stats were "corrected" in the newest version, before it went live:

giving super powered more power for faster replenishing (even though they allready have an advantage for not needing SP used for weapons and additionally got the advantage to have the power stat basicly given to make them even work at all) was... ok! yet: giving them a might buff on top of that was to much!!! hybrid is ok, yet in my oppinion, instead of the might added later, it should have recieved a precission buff instead as compensation for stat splitting. WE would have needed the buff for WM wich it never recieved (except with the artifact, wich doesn't count) in addition to the precission buff IMHO...

in short: i would solve the problem by taking away the might buffs from both super powered and hybrid and give precision for it instead. also give WE a buff for the WM (and probably 5% CC resistance). that would make at least the risk be worth it. well... so much text ^^ lol... still there? well: the way in wich the weapons damage is given for each attack on its own makes longer combos basicly useless and that is another huge problem for itself...

the second version of the playstyle stats was better than the third wich was changed last minute...
testers hated the second version, devs changed it accordingly, and here we are now... suboptimal!

by the way fatal: how did combo powers, in comparison to others while played as hybrid?

Let's keep pushing this Fatal because revamp promised balance, super powered builds are by far the best while hybrid and weaponized are left behind to rot, this is unacceptable especially for players who don't prefer super powered like myself, honestly it wouldn't take long or much to buff stats that are underperforming, i'm puzzled why they haven't done this yet considering the amount of time players have been complaining and asking for this.

so like pre revamp. For instance electrics wired= electrifies enemies. i dont know why they did this, i miss the buff it use to give.

Yeah and how firey weapon used to burn and weapon of destiny used to apply bad karma, I think that stuff needs to come back.




Starnbock I'll get back to you on all that tomorrow, I don't have enough time atm to respond to that novel lol

Yep, already considered this. I still think hybrid should have higher damage potential then PFtT (excluding combo powers) because of the fact it has more to deal with then other play styles. I know some people say "you think PFtT is as easy as you make it out to be?" Yes, it really is. This is coming from someone who predominately plays a combo power. PFtT had some risk during AMs where you could lose the bonus damage, but that risk no longer exists, and still someone what exists with hybrid, and weapon play styles. Those two rely on the big hit at the end of a combo to get a lot of their damage out. if they keep getting knocked down or countered, they lose a lot of that damage resulting in a big overall damage loss. PFtT just needs to worry about a split second or two of not casting powers, barely effects them.

Like said above, i agree. The overall damage potential should basically go like this:
Hybird = Combo and channel PFtT
Weapons expert = Burst PFtT (slightly less considering burst PFtT can utilize weapon taps if they wanted to)

One of my pet peeves now with weapon play styles is the SP investment required for them isn't worth the reward at all. PFtT doesn't even need to spec weapon combos if they don't want to. They get everything they need from their initial point- block break, lunge, taps. Hybrid needs to spec the whole tree, while WE needs to spec WM combos which is multiple trees, all to under perform to PFtT....and that's not even mentioning how PFtT can spec both might and power with a single sp while hybrid needs to pick one or other, requiring more sp to maximize it's performance.

Hybrid should have both a might and prec buff. As it's set up, the game caters so much to might builds, from the stats menu to even artifacts, it's no wonder people barely use a weapon....

addressed above, and strongly agree

mentioned above how the game strongly caters to might builds, so again, very much agree

I can def get behind this idea as well. Sometimes your rotation and the timing of your clips as well as the weapo combo you're using doesn't always match up with the cooldown of the weapon buff, extending it a few seconds beyond it's cooldown would be a good QoL fix

See I'm a little more sinister. if it were up to me, i would separate the might and power trees again, making PFtT players either choose between speccing might or power, whether they want to hit harder in shorter amount of time or last longer with lower damage. Since that probably won't happen, I agree WE needs a WM buff to it (say, 20%?) to drive home the fact that it's intended to be used with WM combos. Both WE and hybrid need a weapon regen buff to put them on par with PFtT regen, and a CC resitance buff for both hybrid and WE would be a good fix as well, it'll help with the stunning and knockacks so they don;t lose their combos as much.

As usual were on the same page as always, just wish the devs and everyone else were too....

I didn't test it with combo powers, it was trash when i did during the revamp testing and I assume it'll be the same now. I did create a hybrid movement rotation on live with flight powers that did ok damage.

Actually it didnt.
At first that was stated, but then changed to "viable"

In a perfect world I agree. Within the confines of DCUO and I've said this before...
Stop trying to make 3 viable ways and realize most will play whatever is the dominant style.

We wasted way too long and unfortunately people kept fighting for this asinine 3 ways to dps BS.
I wish they would...I wish they could. But at some point you have to realize they went from saying (they = devs) balanced and statrted to use the term viable.

Stop wasting resources (if they even are) and progress the game instead of continuing to work on a flawed conception of balance. I like that you are adamant, but realize if its this far in and we haven't even made balance in 1 playstyle (pftt) Its even less likely to make 3 do the same.

Really surprised to see this from you. You were on test and saw what combo powers looked like when might and power were separate. I want hybrid brought up to par too but why destroy PFTT in the process?

They actually weren't that bad because of the 10% buff, it wasn't that bad. The devs misunderstood the community and thought they said they didn't want to invest in power to improve performance, so they threw it into might. Plus when they were separated, they gave more of each. Power was giving 12k+ and might was giving 7k. After they were fused it was only 9k for power and like 3-4k for might.

Combo powers eat power as it is just to keep up with other powers using half the power. I'm not into completely crippling them unless they remove power cost from combos. We already got the short end of the power consumption stick so no thanks on making it worse.

I'm in full agreement of removing the combo costs, but that's not what this thread was about nor is it what I'm pushing. I simply said if I had my way, I would have never separated might and power, I would have balanced around them. I'm already saying there's better alternatives to fixing the hybrid issue other then that, which I listed right after, but you chose to zero in on that one thing, trust me Anxient I know the issues for combo powers lol and that one piece you picked out isn't what I'm pushing for. Id rather the devs fix hybrid and weapons expert.

at first it looked like a good idea to me and i was cheering...
when i tryed it on test server, i realized that it actually wasn't.
then i sayd something like "i take everything back what i sayd"
because it changed the game way to much, made it to easy...

yeah, lets hope a dev sees this and brings it on the table...
the root of the problems is clear to me: the playstyle stats,
especially the last minute changes of those were overkill.
seperate might and power, fuse power with vitaliation ^^

i see no reason why not ^^ it doesn't change much for super powered (PFTT), because they don't realy need weapons anyways.
further, the weapon buff costs are high and even when weapons get used with taps between powers, that would be no problem.
weapon taps are not even true PFTT, but a form of hybrid playstyle, so it would benefit only hybrid and maybe WE to some extend.
they changed PI's or took away some, earth for example has lost the dazed PI (wich is good because multiple PI's are a limitation).
therefor, i think that all powers (except gadgets maybe) should only have one PI to work with. there is mental, electro and quantum.
mental has the most awkward PI's wich makes it more complicated to use, then the way it works would be beneficial to the cause...
if they would change those three powers to have only one PI and find a way to handle gadgets in a good way, can't see any problems

i think that would be slightly overkill, maybe... lets say you would take away the might buff from super powered and give hybrid 10% precission instead of might, while WE would have 10% precision and 10% CC resistance, then you would allready have a difference of 20% (from what we have now) between might and precision based damage, wich is just right, if you are asking me... the fine tuning needs to be very carefull here, or else we have super powered becoming to weak again, while weapons could become to strong all of a sudden...

however: players would be pissed anyways ^^
at first at least, untill they get used to it later...