Test Discussion Episode 34: Supercharges, Artifacts, and Balance Changes

If you read the rest of the post, you would see the balance changes are a reference to the shield meta changes, not saying this is opening up changing every other aspect of the game. And I can't wait for Chill to do precision testing himself so I don't have to read spam comments about how broken Flurry is from people who don't even know parsing standards.

I was going to post that last night, but it was pretty broken so I sent a PM instead

U mean those parsers on dummy? Npcs in real content behave totaly different especially vs precision damage but sure if he has nothing else to do with his time be my guest.

Can you even explain what this is supposed to mean lol This almost implies something like npc's are coded to add 30% extra dps to any precision person hitting them in content lol What is "behave" supposed to mean when Corum, Sea Beast, King Shark, and War/Aqua/Coral, and Murk are nothing but sparring targets you have to block every 12-15s against because none of them move signficantly at all besides Murk when he's low on health spamming charges.

You don't really have to for me personaly, but feel free, maybe others want to know this. i just took Mounted turret as an example . What i tried to point at is, what is the benefit of using a 2500sc now sinds the cooldown is pretty much the same as a 5000sc which performs better in dmg overal. At the current state, we can regen a 5000sc within 30s if i'm not mistaken.

well a dummy wont buff its defence like Corum Rath, u can clearly see how precision damage behaves there compared to might damage, the reduction in damage should behave the same but it doesnt.

If you have a gemini or the sc gen + white mods + possible clipping then you can reach that window. A standard rotation/loadout doesn't regen that fast. As a controller with solar flame clipping burst moves and sc gen off cd and white mods, I still fall in the 20-30s range. If I want to reach a 50% supercharge right at 20-21s I need 1 full gemini proc, otherwise I need like 2 more rotations if I remember right.

So you're saying that when bosses buff their defense, weapon damage is ignoring the defense increase while might damage is working correctly? Do you have any proof of this?

Just because you keep saying that the Artifact was working exactly as intended and advertised, over and over, doesn't make it true, because it isn't. If it was, do you really think they would start making changes now? Of course it was missed, it wasn't even tested, of which I don't defend at all because it should have been player-tested before going live, but that doesn't change that the Artifact impacted the game in ways they did not intend for.

Let's stop dancing around the fact that once "the word was out", people knew exactly how OP this artifact could be and how to take advantage of it with excess SC spam and shields. Players went on to spend money to take advantage of this, and now some are barking loud because something is finally being done to restore the imbalances caused, imbalances that has been known about for a while now by most of the community and devs alike. To think that these changes wouldn't come about some day is extremely naive.

If you believe that this didn't affect content in ways they didn't originally intend for, i'd say you're lying, because this artifact has made it perfectly possible to further ignore mechanics thanks to the Meta that's been adapted around this Artifact.

Could/should they have done this sooner? Of course, but just because it didn't happen sooner doesn't mean it shouldn't happen at all, because the truth is that the one's who spent money to take advantage of this would still use that as an excuse not to have this Artifact tampered with.

Oh, I can see the average player being happy with this. Do you know why? Because the average player don't want to dip hundreds of dollars into Artifacts just to feel like they aren't missing out on heavy progression, neither are Artifact supposed to matter as much as they currently do. These changes are step forward in fixing that. A long ways to go, but a start is better than nothing. Especially when the counter-argument to it is "but I spent money! I want my SC Fix NAOW!!!", because like or not, that's what some of the current feedback against this looks right now. Not all, of course, but the one's barking the loudest.

Where did i mention ignoring ? i am saying the reduction in damage behaves different, i dont have to proof to you anything btw just open ur eyes and experience it.

I haven't experienced anything xD You're basically saying, from my understanding at least, a might based power could parse higher on single target, but will then lose in content to precision due to some difference in defense buff'd npc damage registration. If you've never seen the damage of a might vs prec on a non-buff'd enemy, you have nothing to compare to in order to say the defense buff is changing the results. I've never lost to someone who parses lower than me besides when I was nature and lost form changes/my dots repeatedly. And in the same token, I've never beat anyone who parsed higher than me. I've been water prec, ice prec, gadgets prec, nature might based, gadgets might based, and hl might based.

yes what i am saying is that might and prec can perform equal good on dummy but vs a npc defence buff mechanic, might will perform worse.

This is not about beating other players, this is based on my own experience by playing might and prec loadout vs certain defence buff mechanics...

But what I'm saying is, do you even have a control variable. What powerset were you? What powerset were they? What did each of you parse on sparring targets? Did they only beat you by a small amount which is easily thrown off as the controller precision buff and has nothing to do with npc's? What did each of you hit on debuff'd targets? If a defense buff on the npc is causing extra damage for precision, shouldn't the reverse situation of a defense debuff cause a decrease in damage? Have you won on single target on Sea Beast while he's debuffed but then started losing on Corum while he's buffed? If you haven't tested each variable and possible explanation via scientific method-like processes, how are you confident in having the definitive problem figured out?

160 Soul Cloak - Munitions - Shrapnel(sc gen) - Chain Gun - FiveBarrel - MiniNuke
took 30s to get right under halfway to Mounted Turret, from 0 supercharge (so no white mod procs). And yeah, Mounted Turret is like 3-4 seconds of animation time, which is really bad because that's 90k+ you're losing compared to your base rotation..

I'd assume the white mods would place you right at around a minute for a 50% sc. I went to Rage and tested it just out of curiosity and I was able to get a little above halfway to Zerk (another 50%) in 30s with Relentless (sc gen), Outrage, Lacerate.

And at 7437 might (gear was taken off for the previous supercharge test to make sure I didn't run out of power), Turret got me 31028 damage, Speed Drain got me 19926 damage. Average rotation damage is around 4400'ish. So say in 1 10s parse, that could 9s of 4400 damage and 1s of 19926 damage for 59,526 damage total compared to 6-7s of 4400 damage and 3-4s for 31028 for a total damage of 59,628. So roughly the same dps, but you're using 25% more sc. Compared to Neo which would be 15s of 6160, but even just taking 10s of which would net 61,600 damage and beat both of them and have another 5s left. I'd probably run Speed Drain and Neo if I was in a gemini group.

Last night me and my league mates plus Obsidian Chill tested shatter Gotham elite and we beat the raid as all might dps with the new sc changes that were mention in this forum. The experiences from that raid has been posted by my league mates in the Shatter Gotham Elite forum. I'm here to talk about what I thought about the sc changes. First of all, people who are worried that you still can't build sc fast enough, no need to worry because if u are organized and grouped up you can still build sc fast with these new changes. These changes made a huge impact on actually having to be in the gemini for the full 6 seconds it is up because every little sc generation counts. On the fb we ran 2 tanks since the adds randomly one shot players so I would separate them and we burn them down. Being the second tank I would stand in groups when the adds were not up and run infuriate so I can feed sc and give a dmg boost to my group. Also with these new changes we got to play around with a lot of new sc since we wern't limited to the 1 second movement mode ones since those were clearly the best choice. We had 2 group shields one being the electric healer with the 10k group transducer and our gadgets troll with the 30 sec shield. Group transducer was still there to bail a player out once or twice during the fight and used other times when needed but was no longer being used the absurd amount as we were able to do before. Since we no longer had 24/7 sc shield we had to do the mechanics that was presented in the boss fight to survive. It really felt more of a survival thing than anything. To me this is a great change and really did help bringing back the fun that was presented in the challenge of entering an elite raid. Something that I can look forward every week to entering and beating. This made testing really fun. Overall you guys did a great job with the new changes and I really appreciate them.

I guess a way to respond to the outcry in the community could be giving a box or something where you can trade a 160 artifact towards a new 160.

You should only be given 1 per artifact you have at 160 and it has to be consumed within 14 days and only works to get old currently existing not new ones.

I dont believe this is a solution or should be needed since people should be ready for stuff to get nerfed or buffed. Its a mmo after all. I only mention this as an optional solution for all the people crying.

Not sure about the rest, but I agree with the flurry shot comment. The 4 man CoTE run with no troll, DPS using flurry shot is all the devs need to see.

I think some will. But more importantly, people are going to stop spending money on artifacts. And if the raids stay overtuned, people won't be paying to reset them either.

I guess the same video is all the devs need to see in order to nerf rage tank and celestial healing as well since they didn't require power to do their role either. Let's just ignore the fact that it took 2 minutes in the video to go through roughly 10% of Murk's health which means they spent 20+ minutes inside of a boss fight that normally takes 5-6min, Dual Flurry is still broken.