GU73: The Stats Revamp - July 21, 2017

This post is going to contain a variety of issues that have come with the latest update in a raid setting.

First I'll touch on power, simply put DPS barely use any now. I'm not sure whether this is due to the new changes to the superpower focus mastery or if with how another variable has changed giving power with might in the SP tree is too generous right now. We're still testing this to see exactly where the issue lies. This conclusion was based on two raid runs we did today, with two controllers in DWFr at CR189 and then a solo troll for USr also at CR189. I'll post the video footage at the bottom of my post. (Note, the only DPS that did end up struggling for power with a solo troll was Hard Light)

Next is healing and damage. Since the changes to stats with the update last week, I'm seeing it very clearly now that basic damage from ads/bosses is doing very little, like fairly meaningless damage and mechanic / skull based attacks are hitting like a truck. The later I don't have a problem with. What the issue is here now is that besides from those moments I rarely need to touch an ability. This makes it so burst oriented abilities are much more valuable than HoT type abilities especially since HoT abilities are underperforming (Underperforming in the sense that, with how much damage people take due to mechanics it's pointless using the HoT abilities because they recover too little too slowly so that they're almost a waste of power since you'd need to use a burst ability to ensure no one dies)

This leads into some of the power issues you've heard reported in regards to anything that isn't Electric. Nature is mostly HoT based, it doesn't have many large group heals besides Bloom and a pheromone stacked Roar, the main HoTs Savage Growth and Metabolism are too weak in the sense that the HoTs received are too fragmented and therefore too weak to deal with incoming damage.

This is also evident with Sorcery and more so Celestial since Celestial is a mix of burst and HoT, while consume soul and it's variant give a decent initial burst tick the follow up HoT makes it so you'd have to use it's bursting abilities more often which is giving the notion of it being power hungry. With Sorcery it's even worse if you decide to use a pure HoT loadout since not only are the HoTs weak, they're extremely limited with range and application of them.

Besides this HoT issue, the next issue will be with content design, because with how it is now anything that isn't mechanic driven will fail to address the requirement of more support roles. You'll see it more clearly in my videos, in DWF there's a bunch of mechanics which are constantly hurting the group which in turn requires me to use more powers, in this example I was electric and whilst I didn't struggle for power much I'm pretty sure I would if I was using a power set that relied on the usage of HoTs I would have. Also is to take into account that we're outgearing this raid by a lot and because of the new mitigation feature we thankfully didn't feel the full force of the raid as we did prior to this update.

Also I've posted the run where we used a solo troll for USr, in the grundy fight there was barely any power issues for myself or the rest of the group, when I switch to nature for the ghost fight I end up having to deal with quite a bit of power problems explained above. At the last fight of the raid I switched my loadout to be more burst oriented and while I did spike low for power it was not as bad as the ghost fight.

That being said, mechanic / skull based attacks are in a good spot right now, you can try and heal stupid if you have really good reflexes but most of the time people will end up dying. The more complex the raid is the longer it will take which is so much better than the AMfest we have on live. The only issue with how future content will be like because in DWFr it took us 7 minutes to do the first boss, 6 minutes for the second, 14 minutes for the last with people knocked out of the fight where as in USr (7man) it took us 6 minutes to do the first boss, 7 minutes for the second and 4 minutes for the last fight with no one going out of the fight. DWF was a lot harder to heal and we outgeared the raid 20CR+

To conclude, basic damage is too low, HoTs are weak to use in situations now due to high damage content mechanic / boss skull attacks favoring burst powers more and not using them makes it's very power inefficient to play. Double Controllers don't feel like they're required because DPS barely use power, whether this is due to them having too much power or is their power regen is too good it's hard to say yet.

DWF 1st and 2nd Bosses (3:20 and 13:20):



DWF Last Boss:



US 1st Boss:



US 2nd and Last Boss (0:00 and 8:05):



Stats:





Mods were restoration in yellows, resto health in blues and resto prec in reds. Everything Olympian, including gen mods

For a comparison, here's a DWFr run we did before this Fridays update but after the GU73 update. Sorcery Healing's burst abilities are a lot weaker and everyone took a lot more damage due to no mitigation / weaker tanks.

DWF 1st and 2nd Bosses (5:15 and 13:50):

Can there be too much "Balance"?
As a Test I ran "The Spark of Paralax"; but not as a Test of the Instance.
It was a comparison Test of Powers.
I ran Powers I was familiar with, and some not much.
I ran some instances using Trinkets, Orbitals, and Backups; and some with out.
I ran Munitions, Electric, Earth, Quantum, and Mental.
The odd thing was all the instances completed within 5 seconds of each other.
I could have been a four year old child; and the results would probably have been close.
I ran all the instances as a fully loaded CR201 w 245 SP's. All PftT.
The other oddity, was that it took much longer than it would have on live.
So in a sense; you knew all the toons were now weaker but equal.
It almost felt pointless; as if it doesn't matter what buttons you push, if you push enough of them you'll do fine.

"devs, the powers are imbalanced, please fix it!"

*devs balance powers*

"no the powers are TOO balanced! go back go back!"

Anyone tried Elites yet in this version?

Thk 4 the vids Perfection, it seems dwfr/e will continue to be a challenge after all this time, specially when playing right cr.
Overall seems a lot better after the hotfix, specially the power.

hmmm idk how one would get such results the only way your comment would make sense is if all the powers and moves hit the same. and you intentionally paced your self to complete the instance within the time frame. dots(electric) take much more time to show dmg out than burst sooo yeah bro you played yourself.

Could we perhaps make it so that SCG apply both PI of a powerset? I think it would add variety and flexibility since a SCG is normally mandatory if you have a SC in your loadout.

Anyone opposed to this? Please state why if so.

Definetly. And by far at that too .

Hey Mepps, I see that there were no updates to Electric with this hotfix, and the main issue that myself and a lot of other testers have is spark barrage's projectiles spread being to wide and missing. Also the animation of ionic drain while in healer role. Is it possible to have it go back to what it was before the update?

I agree. I'm not really liking how spark barrage is performing especially when you compare it to soul barrage.

This is even worse the way sp is build to spec cause every month u will need to do the respec of all ur stat points for all ur armories LOL - wasting 10 min per armory.

1. Most tank powers only have 1 shield, with a 12 to 18 second cd if I remember right. That's not reliable at all for increasing your health pool-_-
2. Defense and Health affect every tank power not just non combo tanks.

As a disclaimer before this starts, I'm not calculating defense (nor do I think I'll even have to) and I'm not calculating extra healing from the hand socket from shields considering tanks can run the breakout regen back socket which scales off of health or the breakout protection which scales off defense. Either would probably outperform situational extra healing from specific moves especially in situations where a tank where is cc'd a lot from a lot of adds or the boss.

To be fair for a tank switching between powers*
190cr tank
dom/health oly mods
dom/health oly gens
100sp in health
100sp in dom
no league hall

30100 health
4158 resto
5661 dominance
12147 defense

Fire tank - +50% health, +35-50% defense while not blocking
Not sure if they %'s are additive or multiplicative but to cover either:
3% health for them added before the 50% health buff is 903 health.
3% health for them added after the 50% health buff is 1354 health.

Fire tank's immolation shield multiplier was approximated to be 1.52.
Shielding = Base Shield Multiplier (BSM) * (112.5% Resto + 150% Dom)
5% more dom and 5% more resto would lead to 170 more dom and 125 more resto (rounded).
1.52*(~140.625+~255) = 601.35 extra shield strength every 18 seconds while the extra 900-1350 health gets refreshed every few seconds when the tank gets capped back off by the healer. Not even a question of which is better. Would be worse if the fire tank was modded straight health for maximizing their health pool.

Fire conclusion: Better tank with Weapons Expert with 3% health, that has nerfed power regen for a power that needs to clip and or attack to keep their defense increased.

Ice tank - 65% defense while not blocking, additional 35% defense with ice armor
12147->24294 defense with both.
3% health is 903 health.
3% def is either 364 defense applied to base, or if it goes after the defense buffs, it'd be 728.

Refection (12s) - 1.21*(~140.625+~255) = 479 extra shield strength
Winter Ward (18s) - 2.3*(^) = 910 extra shield strength
Shatter Restraint (18s) - ? Just to take an average of the previous & use 1.755*(^) = 396 extra shield strength.
Just to do 36 seconds, assuming Ice was for some reason hitting each of these off cooldown.
479*3=1437 health
910*2=1820 health
396*2= 792 health
4049 health in 36 seconds compared to 903 extra health. Which means if I an ice tank gets capped off every 5 seconds, they have 4515 compared to 4049. That's actually a reasonable time frame considering ice prevents damage and is one of the strongest tanks on test currently.

Earth tank - Defense =

1. Most tank powers only have 1 shield, with a 12 to 18 second cd if I remember right. That's not reliable at all for increasing your health pool-_-
2. Defense and Health affect every tank power not just non combo tanks.

As a disclaimer before this starts, I'm not calculating defense (nor do I think I'll even have to) and I'm not calculating extra healing from the hand socket from shields considering tanks can run the breakout regen back socket which scales off of health or the breakout protection which scales off defense. Either would probably outperform situational extra healing from specific moves especially in situations where a tank where is cc'd a lot from a lot of adds or the boss.This is also assuming best case scenario for hitting tank shields off cooldown, which isn't realistic.

To be fair for a tank switching between powers*
190cr tank
dom/health oly mods
dom/health oly gens
100sp in health
100sp in dom
no league hall

30100 health
4158 resto
5661 dominance
12147 defense

Fire tank - +50% health, +35-50% defense while not blocking
Not sure if they %'s are additive or multiplicative but to cover either:
3% health for them added before the 50% health buff is 903 health.
3% health for them added after the 50% health buff is 1354 health.

Fire tank's immolation shield multiplier was approximated to be 1.52.
Shielding = Base Shield Multiplier (BSM) * (112.5% Resto + 150% Dom)
5% more dom and 5% more resto would lead to 170 more dom and 125 more resto (rounded).
1.52*(~140.625+~255) = 601.35 extra shield strength every 18 seconds while the extra 900-1350 health gets refreshed every few seconds when the tank gets capped back off by the healer. Not even a question of which is better. Would be worse if the fire tank was modded straight health for maximizing their health pool.

Fire conclusion: Better tank with Weapons Expert with 3% health, that has nerfed power regen for a power that needs to clip and or attack to keep their defense increased.

Ice tank - 65% defense while not blocking, additional 35% defense with ice armor
12147->24294 defense with both.
3% health is 903 health.
3% def is either 364 defense applied to base, or if it goes after the defense buffs, it'd be 728.

Refection (12s) - 1.21*(~140.625+~255) = 479 extra shield strength
Winter Ward (18s) - 2.3*(^) = 910 extra shield strength
Shatter Restraint (18s) - ? Just to take an average of the previous & use 1.755*(^) = 396 extra shield strength.
Just to do 36 seconds, assuming Ice was for some reason hitting each of these off cooldown.
479*3=1437 health
910*2=1820 health
396*2= 792 health
4049 health in 36 seconds compared to 903 extra health. Which means if I an ice tank gets capped off every 5 seconds, they have 4515 compared to 4049. That's actually a reasonable time frame considering ice prevents damage and is one of the strongest tanks on test currently.

Earth tank - Defense = 65% of your dom while not blocking
170 extra dom from 5%dom would lead to 110 extra defense.
3% defense from a future defense/health would lead to 364 extra defense......

Gemstone Shield - 3.27*(^) = 1293 extra health every 18 seconds.
3% health from a future defense/health would lead to 900 health every "x" seconds. If an earth is capped off every 9 seconds, it beats the extra strength of gemstone shield.

Rage tank - 20% health + 50% defense whilenot blocking, as combo counter increases, gain Health equal to up to 100% of your dom.

Redirected Rage - 2.17*(^) = 858.5 extra health every 18 seconds.
170 extra dom from 5% *100% = 170 extra health.
3% health before the 20% health buff = 900 extra health.
3% health after the 20% health buff = 1084 extra health.

Extra defense from health/def has no competition.


Atomic - 2% max health on attacks (1 per second cap if I remember correctly) & 40% of max dom healing on atomic combo use.
900 extra health * .02 = 18 extra health per second.
255 extra dom *4 = 102 extra extra healing per atomic combo.

In 12 seconds, you can do roughly 5 full atomic combos.
That's 5*2 ticks of 102 extra = 1020 extra healing from atomic combos.
I'll go light and just say 8 ticks of 18 extra health instead of assuming 12, that's 144 extra healing from the healing aura.
900 extra health in itself +144 from combo = 1044 compared to 1020.

Density - 1.87*(^) = 740 extra shield strength every 18 seconds.
Extra health is 900..

So in 36 seconds,
Hybrid would get me 740*2 + 3060 = 4540 extra health.
Weapon would get me 144*3 + x.

4540-432 = what x needs to be to even out (4108). Extra health pool is 900. If you get capped off on health 5 times in 36 seconds, which is once every 7 seconds you win. For atomic specifically, breakout regen/breakout protection back also skews heavily in favor of weapon due to combo interruptions being somewhat frequent reducing the amount of combo healing and increasing the healing received from weapon.

In every single tank power, you'd lose. Tanks don't use weapon combos for regen so you're basically asking a tank "Would you trade being tankier for less power regen?"

If they value being tanky, which would be the case in any SM or Elite content, that puts extra stress on the controller now to deal with that regen loss because that extra tankiness could be needed especially if you're either slightly low on stats in Elite on you're going for an extra round in SM. If their answer is no, then they'd probably go with Hybrid or Superpowered. The problem you're going to have is that in all of my years playing, I have never heard of a tank saying that they are responsible for their power management in a raid. Even as rage, people just expect it to be rough on the controller but don't think about asking the tank to just run a reducer instead of a rage cancel to save on power cost. Tanks prioritize living from what I've seen under any circumstances, similar to how DPS prioritize damage and won't lose damage to help with the troll. With that type of tank mentality, you're basically forcing nerfed power regen and extra weapon damage on every competitive tank.

3. Fire tank is clip orientated to get back into blocking. Rage is spam based on their combo meter for extra health. Earth has aftershock tanking (pet might be more conservative). Atomic is combo spam based healing. Ice doesn't require spam.So you're looking at 4/6 of the powerset playstyles that drain power on a more than minimum level.

4. TANKS DON'T HAVE PRECISION. If I ever see a tank doing Downward Smash during USr while eating a Flamethrower to the face and I'm the healer, I'm kicking him.

I tried to convince the group i was in to run elite but they wanted to do usn instead -.-

The elites need to go away and bring back the 3 raid system to where one is easy, one is medium, and the last is difficult. That's when this game was fun as we had raids to do and they tested our skill level. The elite however, it's just one shots and ain't skill.

Great post. Just one point before someone less repectful says it. Fire tanks don't need to block anymore. We only get the Health buff while not blocking, and the defense buff while attacking makes it pretty much useless to block now that there are no one shots. Other than that I agree with your estimate of things. I'm pretty sure there's a reason the devs haven't included extra health in the Masteries. If they did decide to add them, 3% is obviously too much.

I have to disagree, I like that I actually get to see the whole story in an episode these days.

WEAPON EXPERT:
at first, it gave you an exclussive bonus for dammage, that was of course what everyone got driven to as a dps: if you see something, that raises your dps, you go for it no matter the cost... that left hybrid behind as an option, and power mastery wasn't regenerating enough power anyways to sustain for certain power consuming powers (light for example). thats why we needed devs to do something.
what we got though, was now leaving weapon expert stat point to have more of a disatvantage again...
first i need to say: the intention was good and in the right direction!

QUESTION:
did you take into account that a weapon expert build is forced to allways have all weapon combos unlocked, aswell as the WM's to get the dammage potential maxed out? now, that takes away 30sp to spend for stats, just saying... it is a huge difference if someone puts 145sp in precission vs 175 (in the worst case szenario in wich you got around 250 vs 280sp available, after you are over 280 though, it doesnt realy matter again. but still: you allways need to keep those 30sp in mind when balancing with power mastery...) in terms of dammage potential.

power mastery has been buffed so strongly, you actually wont be able to empty your power bar if you have gone full power (special force generator mods + 175sp might/power + gear mods might/power in head and shoulders), wich is good! if you choose to adjust your power that way, players should be able to do so ^^ then the hybrid was buffed aswell with 10% might, 5% resto, vita, dom. that is also a good one, only i would ask: why not 5% might and 5% pressision?

SUGGESTION:
since WE affords more skillpoints and lacks in additional buffs exept weapon dammage, suppose it would be fair to grant weapon expert 5% health and/or maybe some combo breaking imunity (5% resistance to CC effects)... if both, i would reduce auto power regeneration to zero while in combat... what you think, pretty fair, isn't it?