Test Discussion GU97: Weapon Combat Update

hello comrad ^^ i guess we have a misunderstanding. let me explain how i see hybrid working as intended: you would be playing with and are supposed to use your weapon combos without the most WM´s, because you are going to clip the last weapon attack of your combos with a tray power to cancel the animation and get both the full damage of the weapon combo and the full damage of the super power. WM´s are NOT supposed to get clipped away before you can see the animation starting... they have a bar to tell you when exactly an attack will hit and to time it right or not clipp away the animation at all and start the next combo right after would be the goal for WE... however: both the weapon combos damage (clipped away) and the super powers damage should add up to make hybrid realy strong. it just isn´t the case. what i meant earlier was, that IF you try to (for example) use any weapons ranged tap and clip it with a power that has zero to 0.5 second cooldown, one would think it should lead to a damage increasement, because you get both white and yellow numbers hitting at the same time in very quick succession, right? well, it doesn´t work. try it. you will end up loosing frames. in the end, you will do more damage if you would go all might, choosing super powered playstyle and spam only your super power. where on the other side, you might aswell tshink going WE and spec fully into precission would make the weapon strong enough that loosing frames to the powers dove tails makes it so weak, one ends up producing more DPS when only range tapping in the first place. i hope i have clearified what i meant to you. right now, we have a situation where the hybrid playstyle defies any logically expectation you may have when thinking on using it in the damage role to the point were it falls flat no matter how you turn it. and well, i just want the game to be fun, that is why i even take the time to write long stories like this ^ in the forum... i am by no means a top gun, yet i like to play DCUO besides of complainging a lot and seeing how things are on test... well. this is my feedback.

i play an alt with every power, most are brawlers,
some use staff, some HB, ALL are WE, just saying...
it is maybe just me, perhabs i am doing all wrong...

How is this "BALANCED"?

PREC MELEE/RANGE AOE is now nowhere near MIGHT MELEE/RANGE AOE.

you need to check your numbers again. you are making a mistake 100%.

That's actually the true purpose of this update.
Anyone saying otherwise is either being dishonest or gullible. Hopefully the same energy is kept when something else is dominating scoreboards and SM? Lmao

Welp, I made a list of all the weapons and whats useble or not, but my power went out, just wasted my morning on it, smh

I thought their intention was to give players a bigger pool of options.
It wouldve been easier if they just announced it to the community as: "WE WANT TO MAKE 99% OF OUR PLAYERS TRANSFER TO MIGHT, THEN REALIZE MIGHT IS OP AFTER A FEW DLC'S THEN WE WILL MAKE ANOTHER NERF UPDATE"

This is what confuses me what are we really balancing
For this update. Are you balancing might/prec or balancing weapons in general for the other weapons that were severely lacking?

I thought this whole update was about balancing the weapons to make them stronger.

Might is not balanced itself how do you try to balance something with something that is unbalanced without first balancing it?

The point behind balance passes are to make things balanced. This is less about "O the VWD is 2 OP" and more about *points at the 95% of all weapons combos that don't work correctly regardless of how broke the VWD currently is*. That's why we need the balance pass in the first place, and why people are complaining, because it seems like an excuse to nerf the "sweet" precision artifact, as opposed to, you know, actually fixing stuff.

If the sweet spot for might DPS is 60 k, and you have two whole precision combos doing 70K, and everything else is hitting like, 50 max, then you don't just chop off the two top precision combos and call it balance. You also don't just insist that everyone switches to the playstyle you favor, because that's also not balance - that's asking for favoritism.

That's you saying "i'm okay with things still not working, I just don't want these two things to work well because I personally don't like the idea of them, because I personally don't use them".

"Balance" would take into account that certain weapons basically forbid you from having a secondary hybrid style damage source fully available. So do certain powers - just try keeping a significant sustained DOT on the back side of a mental loadout using the hold x4 2h combo (spoiler alert - you can't) - so, for the sake of balance, those weapons should be hitting harder.

Not necessarily harder than "every might powerset", but definitely harder than "Any Ranged Weapon Combo", and maybe "hard enough to potentially meet damage ranges possessed by a playstyle that stands forty feet away and cooks things by cycling through tray powers." Period.

The risk-reward factor was the entire mindset behind Rage, and it's completely missing from all other melee combat in the game. That's not fair.

If I'm running a loadout with four shields and one offensive skill, it means i'm putting my money on the weapon skill, in this case a melee skill, and those should be front loaded to do quite a bit more because of that risk-reward factor alone. It's not quite the same form of complexity as a hybrid playstyle - though when I say "form" I mean specifically the form itself, I'm not using offensive skills, instead I have to interject shield coverages regularly, I still have to clip, and instead of clipping meaning "i get an extra 2k DPS" it means "I don't die in the next five seconds".

Since I seriously doubt that the devs are willing to include a proc that scales your precision versus might damage based on an aggregate of applicable skills in your loadout (offensive powers - > might, shields - > prec, buffs - > hybrid) the other way to accomplish this is to touch up the slider on melee combos a little bit so that they do like, actual damage. Someone who can lift a tank hitting you with a two handed sword should kill you instantly - keeping up with "the girl who farts snowflakes" shouldn't be an impossibility in that situation.

I wasn't going to post until an update but with people either lying or running bad loadouts intentionally/unintentionally, let me clarify a few things:
1. Do not buff regular AoE weapon combos PERIOD (outside of Staff's Downward Smash and maybe the smallest buff to Bow's Arrow Fling). They are already parsing at might levels of damage and noticeably higher in certain situations. Increasing their dps past their current stage would produce a balance problem. Earth and Rage (the powersets everyone is comparing melee weapons to) have the strongest might based supercharges in the game that need to be nerfed in themselves and most people want to be able to compete with them through that discrepancy, but I believe that the devs would see that as a different issue than what is currently being looked at. If you want regular weapon combos used on single target ranged, a huge buff to bow->flurry, staff->focused spin, hb->scissor kick is needed.

2. What needs to be buffed is the AoE melee WM combos. The top might based rotations as well as regular weapon combos rely on clipping to produce high damage output by speeding up the rotation . WM combos are not clippable completely to the same extent as regular weapon combos and as such scale less with might and sometimes have weird timings with rotations on a 12s timer. You can clip their dovetail but not the entire portion of the WM. Brawling's Doom Spin Mastery being nerfed may be sitting at it's intended damage formula wise but because it does not have a dovetail, it doesn't get sped up like the rest of the WM combos. This causes it to not only fall behind in WM dps but it also removes might based scaling. The same thing applies to Bow->Flurry because it can't be clipped. It has to produce significant more damage on single target than Focused Spin from Staff as an example because the Focused Spin is going to have a might based move clipped with the animation and Bow->Flurry isn't.

This right here.

The sweet spot for might is definitely not 60k. Like 2 might powers hit that. Most are in the 40-45 range and maybe 3 others at 50kish. Then you have some that are even in the 35k range. Don’t be giving exaggerated numbers cause you want things over buffed or to match 2 powers that can arguably use a toning down to come more in line with others.

If the sweet spot for might DPS is 60 k



60k sweet spot? are you here for clout or sumthing?

Waitaminute...

did I see it...

I did read that correctly, yes. And it says If.

Also, TWO WEAPON COMBOS out of ALL OF THE COMBOS IN THE GAME reach that performance level, and they're in the process of being chopped down as we speak, so if you want to talk about misrepresentation, there it is. Meanwhile...

There are more powersets doing "good" damage than there are weapon combo based combat cycles, by a long shot.

DId I not say 2 powers could arguably use a toning down?? Why add to things that are over par?? We should be trying to get everything in the same area as close as we can. Sure things will never be perfect but there’s no need to add to things that are to good.

Also I’ve tried a bunch of stuff on test and there is a decent amount of things that are good provided you run the right setup. Not all things but a good amount. Most of the things I like are regular combos that I can clip. If we can get the COG passive to work with regular weapon combos that would be ideal or give that same buff to the hybrid mastery and that might help solve that issue of having someone in the group using it for you to be at max potential.

Also I hope your considering the troll buff in your testings.

Edit: I’m also not saying some things don’t need a buff either.

This is impossible. Might based rotations can't scale with prec in the current game. Back in the day when we had mixed abilities and gear, you could. You can't balance at 480sp prec dps with max prec and 130+ in might with a 300sp might dps with just max might.

Powers never took skill points to access they took power points that were separate from skill points and you were limited in power points but I think I know what your getting at.

Anyway a weapons playstyle can take more advantage of skill points then might powers. Once your fully invested into might thats it you really have nowhere to go from there in terms of dps. Sure you can spec into some prec but even with the max prec you can get in a might build doesn't do to much for you cause tap damage isn't really making or breaking your damage.

Now on the other hand using weapons especially a hybrid build you can take advantage of both prec and might, you don't hit a ceiling with weapons like you do with might and there is way more room to improve your dps.

So in terms of what you say WM and weapons should have a edge over might they certainly do.

Well i have tested all the weapon mastery combos ranged only.. i can say is hand blaster, dual wield, brawler < on multi targets are doing very high damage..

for single target :
hand blasters into explosive shot peaking a 40.6k at times..
daul wield peaked around 32k to 39 it did hit 40k once only
Brawler weapon single target doing around the 31kto 37k mark...

right now it is between hand blasters and dual wield for singl target...

for multi targets brawler tends to much better than all the weapons tested ( the tap hold combo spam)

you may ask where is the video showing these claims it is on it's way...

used no mods no weapon buffs from powers tray and used 3 rank 200 artifacts (wrist, ai,phil stone) total of 23498 Precision.

This right here, when we first start testing wm, we through away the ones that are either too long, or not worth using due to

Animations
Single target melee Extreme Risk No reward
Too long No reward

Majority of them don't hit hard enough to use, there's no value in any of the 3 categories unless they parse above might or fixed proximity wise, the weapons that due work in the other hand can be adjusted closer to might parses being

AOE range
AOE melee
AOE cone
Single target range

These 4 categories work together with might playstyle, which we first test and keep in content.

Conclusions...

1) All Solar Flame Mastery are underpowered. Need a buff (Rifle and One Handed);
2) Meteor Blast Mastery is underpowered. Need a buff;
3) Mortar Mastery is underpowered. Need a buff;