Why Was WM Implemented?

A question I have been asking myself since it dropped, and I can't recall ever being seriously answered by a green name. I know it doesn't matter much now because we're far and away from that time now, but it would still be nice to know the reason.

To my knowledge WM was to be the answer to DPS power bars dropping quickly, forcing trolls into the "battery" role. Ok, well let's talk about that for a moment. It was obvious the second WM hit live that it would be the go to way to do damage because of the huge benefits and far and away increased damage. It completely devalued the way damage was being done up to that point, and it was no surprise that that was going to happen. Why did the developers implement something that was so blatantly going to change the nature of core gameplay? Why did they decide to change an entirely different role in an attempt to fix another? Who was even asking for WM? As far as I recall it was not a community created idea, but one entirely designed in-house and implemented without any considerations as to the incredible side effects of it.

The thing I really can't understand is, if it were power bars that were the issue, why could we not just have given DPS an increased rate of power regen while in battle (essentially like what we have now), and leave everything else alone? Seems to me we could have save a lot of time on dps updates if we had just gone that route.

I'll go ahead and bold the key questions I have on the matter. If anyone has better memory on the subject than I, or if any green names want to fill me in that would be greatly appreciated. Still boggles my mind to this day.

the way i see it, it was a waste of time to implement it but a green name would probably tell ya it was to bypass the time till we got the advanced mechanics...

Prior to Amazon Fury I, each DLC contained something that added to the "player package":

• Light, Electricity, Earth, Shield, Utility Belt, Lairs & Mainframe, Quantum, Celestial, Rage

Weapon Mastery may have been originally planned as part of Amazon Fury I as it was released in the game update (4-29-14) that contained the assets for Amazon Fury I (activated on 4-30-14).
League Halls were released in the update just before Halls of Power I.
Skimming was released in the update right before War of the Light II.

No. It was not for the benefit of Trollers. It was to bring everyone's damage abilities in line. That way, everyone had an equal playing field regardless of powerset.

It was then supposed remain in line with Advanced Mechanics as far as damage potential.

Both were an absolute fail if you ask me.

WM took away 99% of a weapons moves. Dumb. It also forced us to switch into another weapon. Now, while that is really only a cosmetic thing, the fact that the Devs don't understand why that's an issue is... disappointing.

AM's did something similar. They forced a 123456 specific loadout that negates half or more of our availble moves. Not that we didn't have that, in a way, before. The difference is now that is the ONLY way and it's spelled out for us. Again, just another major break in immersion. Which seems to be an ongoing issue these last couple years.


Edit: and btw, no. It was not asked for at all. The closest thing was that people wanted a way to switch weapons on the fly. This not only forces the use of another weapon, but has only one option.

Considering the side effects of these major changes seems to be a reoccurring issue. They apparently do not have a QC department. Or whatever.

I hear you, felt the same way when Wm was introduced, it was almost like we were being forced to eat spinach but you brought macaroni cheese, they should have been more careful and thought more before releasing Wm, now the damage is done were do we go from here.

Folks like Tsavorentless and Pumped wanted SP to matter more. WM did that, for a short time. It backfired, as because WM was introduced, so were 50 mile long life bars, which nobody liked. People felt pressured into using WM, and WM became very dull and repetitive, and it's own accuracy and timing would vary depending on server latency, no matter how spot on you thought you were. Also, BLEEDING THUMBS, OW!

Now we have AMs, which tend to outclass WM as a whole, save for those few moments where a solitary npc has wandered away from the pack and isn't worth wasting the time on building up a single AM rotation on.

Should it be removed entirely? Save up some of that RAM?

I dunno. Perhaps it can be tweaked into providing power return for support roles in relation to the power boost being used when the combo tier is a certain color, giving more power back the higher the tier.

Or another area of play that's been lacking in performance, especially vs AM's and WM's: supercharge regeneration. Instead of giving power back to support roles, switch it up so that using WM boosting in support role stance will regenerate supercharge much faster than without.

It was step 1 in their supposed attempts to create balance amongst the powersets. They saw it as their way to solve 2 problems: Balance the powersets and fix the "battery" mentality of controllers. However, it solved neither. What it did was remove a fun and fast paced clipping system in favor of an extremely slow, boring combat system and nearly removed the controller powerset completely.

2 years later and we still don't have balance (really not very close either), we only have 1 way to DPS (AMs) and everyone runs with 1 controller because a POT is enough to sustain 5/8 of the group and there are next to no controller mechanics in content that matters (raids).

Really, WM was the first step in the dismantling of what was a fun game. It was a change nobody asked for or wanted. All the players wanted was a better balance of might and precision, which would have solved pretty much every problem. Instead, they went for a very convoluted system and totally destroyed the best part of the game. At least when the content was bad (and it was for the better part of 2 years before AF 1) the physical combat system made up for it, but now its insanely boring hitting your 1-2-3-4-5-2-3-4-5 combo over and over without worrying about PIs, modifiers or whether to single target or use group damage is horrid. WM was the worst addition to this game by far. It solved no issues it set out to and now isn't even used by any DPS.

I vote for its removal. AM's outclass it anyway, and that seems to be their new focus.

Remove WM. Buff up the damage potential of Precision. And remove Precision damage from powers. That mistake should never have been made and was the original cause of balance issues.

I said it way back when. Might =powers and Precision = weapons. Adjust accordingly. That was all that ever needed to be done.

You can go to DCUO YouTube channel and watch the revealing of WM. My understanding from this stream is that WM was implemented to compete with clipping powersets as well as lighten the load on trollers. HL clipping was really the catalyst to move in the WM direction.
Later on dovetails were added to animations and clipping pretty much removed as we once knew it to allow animations to play out as was originally intended.

IMO, the removal of WM is 100% pointless. You can simply not use it and wahla! no WM. How many dps do you see using it these days anyway?
WM also added another row of stats to use our SP. One can argue the usefulness of SP, but I'd rather keep those options there. IMO, we benefit more from it than if it was not there. Also, WM is useful for support roles. It's not needed, but it helps out my troll since no group wants to run with more than 1 troll. The smaller power cost for casting my powers adds up over time.

Nothing combos into a Staff finisher.



WM is a Fail that we live with. Like others said WM was the birth of Skyscraper Health Pools. Also the beganning of Unbalanced Roles from Support To DPS. Part of the reason this game is DPS Universe today. WM was poorly executed implemented. An back fired. It solved 1 or 2 problems including Troll issue. While bringing 3 to 4 problems because of it.

I don't mind if they keep it, so long as all the "regular" weapon combos are given the opportunity to do just as much damage (relevance to the amount of time they take to pull off ). Ya know, how it really should be.

it was a short time fix, but now I don't get why don't they lower the amount of sps require for it.

I think it was implemented because the developers wanted to reward players for watching the animations. It was supposed to reduce the amount of clipping and utilize all of the extra skill points. We need to remember how barren the skill point trees were prior to weapon mastery being implemented. Weapon Mastery was good in theory but it completely shifted the combat into a less skill, more reward gameplay type which isn't very fun.

Combat Pre-WM:


Here's a bit straight from the developer's mouths during the reveal:

The right question is: Why so many hate Weapon Mastery? WM is great unless you love emptying your power bar and burning Soder Colas. I think the complaints come all from PVPers.

I would really like for someone to Splice this video and a video of current dpsing together and show it to someone who has never played before. I would love to asked them which one looks more fun. As much as I've animation cancelled in the past , I can't say is was really fun all the time. It was always a means to an end in my case. I can see how AMs can be boring to some but that is mostly due to the lack of variety some have. If more loadouts were allowed I think a lot more people would happier. Atomic is proof that variety is the spice of life.

WM was originally introduced as an alternative to clipping powers with weapon attacks.( True reason : Crappy players were whining about not being able to keep up with the dmg that great players did , so the devs created this system to elevate those horrible whiners closer to the great players and make them effective in the game without them making any effort whatsoever. )

That means that 1 rotation involing HB -> explosive shot WM + random power would make equal dmg to 1 rotation of HB solar flare + random power. WM clipping is slower than normal clipping therefore dmg from normal clipping would have been lower but it would happen faster therefore the result would be the same.

Unfortunatelly they took it too far. They gave WM superior dmg capabilities while removing any sense of speed from the game ( nerfing phase dodge, normalizing power cooldowns, normalizing weapon animations and more ). This turned WM from a viable less complicated way to make dmg, to the only way to make dmg.

In the original design there was no mention or intention to include advantages for support roles. So it is not a surprise that when those advantages were added they did more harm than good, as support roles did not need WM in order to function ( neither did DDs but thats another story ).
In the end what was not anticipated by the dev team and a huge portion of the game ( mainly not good players ) was the death of controllers. Due to how slow the WM combos were and the reduced power cost they provided to support roles, none of the roles required much power in order to function anymore. Add on top of this the trully amazing yet completelly game-breaking ( in a bad way ) Brawling -> shuricken storm WM power was no longer an issue for most healers. Tanks were never using insane amounts of power and DDs had already become so slow that 1 controller was now enough to keep an entire group powered without problems.

For the ones that are still clueless about why brawl->shuricken storm is so efficient in power regenerantion : Power regen is affected by hit counter. The more hits you make the faster you get SC and power regen, this effect is amplified when the hit counter changes colour. ( from white to blue, then orange, then yellow ) Brawling always had the lowest hit number required for the counter to change colour. The number was 5 ( brawling had really slow animations ). So when the WM was introduced Brawling received a magic shortcut into 6-7 hits ( orange counter count ) in just 2 moves ( tap - hold ). Making it by far the most efficient weapon to use if you are any of the support roles.

Trolls now had near infinite power ( yay all those fix the troll role whiners would stop ). BUT it turns out there was no demand anymore. Result was that trollers became increasingly useless as more people figured it out and of course the tombstone was finally here when the AMs were introduced with that horrible power back mechanic, making the little power trolls still needed to provide disappear. Sad story.

Actually I think that it allows trollers to do what they WANTED in the first place: CONTROL.

Instead of just being power batteries, which was not in the original concept, now they are valued (at least in the groups I run with ) for their ability to debuf enemies in various ways (damage, defense, healing) as well as for their ability to help control the field, especially the adds (Quantum holds anyone?). And their ability to dump power in an instant when needed sure doesn't hurt still either.

Also not all of us are blessed with the physical ability to quickly clip powers (I've been on since beta and certainly know how to do stuff) over a long period of time and it was getting ridiculous as far as clipping speed so that you would never even see a lot of power animations. I personally enjoy being able to see the power animations and still do decent damage.

Of course, I too wish they would have a row of WM powers in the same weapon type, perhaps an extra row that would replace upper powers with the WM equivalents if you paid for it so you don't have to swap to another weapon if you don't want to. (HB -> HB improved pulse beam for example)

I wish they would remove it completely.
SP needs an overhaul. And WM was not the way to do it.

they are already phasing WM out. We are soon getting a tank power that doesn't need any weapon attacks! Naturally, it will likely be easier to do a quick lunge but few tanks use WM attacks regularly. Attacks like Scissor Kick have now been buffed to WM crit levels. We don't know what their plan is yet for further weapon scaling which may further diminish WM use for compound DPS powers. OTOH the changes for weapons may include a rescaling of WM. Since I play two compound power sets, I am curious to know what's in store. I don't actually mind weapons or WM though.

You said it best it WM was when some may not remember that some people when WM was announced that they would quit and this and that. That's when I notice a drop off of players.