Test Discussion Episode 39 - Quislet Artifact

Just tested it again on single target with Source Shard and it looks decent now. Its around the same damage as good might rotations.

Coming back to the topic from earlier in this thread: While playing with a buff troll you're automatically at a disadvantage. The only way to "Quickfix" this is to increase the damage of pets further wich will look quite overpowerded on paper/sparring target.

If there are pet changes planned in terms of damage based on stats and not CR or any sort of Troll buff artifacts for pets, i wouldn't buff it any further for now.

The ability changes are great. I would still change the 10k and 5k SC effect of the beam. It does the same damage however while there is only 1 target anyway, so it has not much relevancy.

We need more artifacts slots

Perfect, thank you. Look forward to any testing of this you do. May have to get on test myself finally since there's just so many options now

Some powers do not have 10,000 Supercharges at all or do not have ofensive 10,000 supercharges (for example, rage, celestial, ice, electricity ...) this leads to another imbalance between powers. It is better in this case to use all variants of the Supercharges (2500,5000,10000 ).
2500 and 10000 for an AOE attack and 5000 for a single attack?

Hmm, these buff SCs that you listed, do they not count? I didn't get a chance to try this last night, got home late and really did nothing other than Stabilizer before going to bed.

I would assume that these would require you to start combat to get him to come out and try using the buff power and see if he does his attack. If it doesn't, this would be definitely a moment the devs should look at the 50% and 100% SCs counting for it. Where just damage based ones should work no matter what.

As for 25% or less ones, that would be the breaks for this artifact and I don't think it's intended to work with them to start.

Rage and ice do not have 10,000 SC at all, electricity and celestial have 10,000, but they are protective and it is pointless to use them in a dps build. Of course, we can say that this artifact is not for these powers and thus close the question. Or we can balance the artifact.

The intentions of the artifacts is to give more modularity of refinement of play styles. If they make this artifact do way more damage than any power set that does not have an offensive high sc cost supercharge, then you would have grounds to request a balance pass on it. (Example would be Solar Amplifier got one, because it was just too good due to the bug of not splitting at 200. It started becoming a requirement for all loadouts.) But as it is, how many damage artifacts can be used by all players?

My hope is they redo all supercharge abilities to line up with 50% for adds and 100% for single target. I made a thread supercharges are not super. It would be nice to hear from a Dev. if there is a plan to change supercharges.

Sorry, but I do not understand your point of view, some forces have an offensive 10,000, others do not, the pet's strongest single target attack is tied to 10,000 SC. Among 10,000 there is already a huge imbalance, this artifact further enhances those 10,000 SC that are already much stronger than others. These new changes tend to increase the imbalance, and reduce the options for viable builds.

I'm trying to state it's a trade-off.

To slot that 100% SC, you have to forgo something else. The same goes with any powerset. I know several really good players that don't ever use an SC at all.

Play style wise, having the biggest hit being on a long cooldown 100% supercharge balances it. You will not be able to spam the move because of the cooldown of the SC and the artifact's attack. It doesn't give an advantage because within that same time, you have potential to hit several smaller attacks for the same amount of time.

Any power, even if it does not have a good 5000 SC, can take Neo Venom (a very good 5000 SS), but a power that does not have 10,000 SC cannot get a good 10,000 SC.
As a result, power with good 10000 SC and 5000 SC have two options, power with good 5000 SC has one, where you see "trade-off" ?

Easy, the powerset itself is the tradeoff. When they developed the powers, they deemed it not necessary to give them a flat big hit 100% SC. OR they decided something unique. Like Rage's mechanic or earth's aftershock.

The tradeoff is how they are played. If you literally just did 1:1, you would always lose, because you are not playing towards the powerset's strengths. But you are now veering off topic.

When it comes to this artifact, it is balanced because you would have to build around using it, not the other way around.

There is probably a language barrier (English is not my native language and I don't know it very well), I give up, I just don't understand your "logic" ....

I was feeling the same way and was about to give up too.

I'll attempt one last time.

Not all powersets have the same supercharges. We agree on that much.

What I'm trying to say because the big hit is based on using a 5000 or 10000 cost balances it because you can't spam these at all. In the amount of time it takes to generate enough SC to do a 10000 cost, you can do quite a bit of normal superpower damage.

So saying it's unfair to powersets that have superpowers that are less than 5000 is false, because the ultimate goal of damage is how much you can do per second. (Hence damage per second, DPS.)

This was also their reasoning when they did the stats revamp that also changed the powers to follow the 100/200/300/500 power cost balancing. A 300 power cost attack does a lot more damage, but also has a longer cooldown (typically 3-5 seconds) where a 100 power cost attack does negligible damage, but you can produce more because of a short cooldown. (typically 0.5 seconds to 1 second)

Getting to the artifact, since it's big hit requires you to utilize a 5000 to 10000 cost supercharge, also puts it subject to the cooldown of the supercharge. Take Gadget's bunker buster, 10000 cost AOE SC. It has a 60 second cooldown. Even if you use a water healer to refresh cooldowns, you could not spam the damage that this artifact can do. Then add into the fact you have to get a full supercharge again. Thus allowing it to be balanced based on that.

Something to clarify (because i was thinking the same way before, as i read the changes from Batuba):
The Refractal Beam that gets triggered by a 5000 or 10000 SC is the same. Its the exact same beam with the exact same damage. The only difference is, that a 5000 SC enables it to split between targets.

So if you are in a boss fight with only 1 enemy (the boss), then the damage will be exactly the same.
When you are in a fight with more than 1 enemy, a 5000 SC will hit more but split between those enemies.
With that beeing said, the only importance of the 10000 SC hitting only 1 target, is for a damage check while multiple enemies are close by. This wouldnt even be the case for the Grail damage check in FgsE atm, because you would tank the adds apart from the boss anyway.

In conclusion, it doesn't matter which SC you use but you will always deal less damage with a 10000 SC - Refractal Beam on multiple targets.

Are you sure this change was already on the test server? I have deleted and leveled this artifact over the last couple of hours several times and each time the artifact's pet attack is the same (only for a single target) and the attack was when using any SC (2500,5000,10000) ...

for clarity, the name of the attack is not displayed correctly in the combat log and the description of the artifact.

i didnt test on multiple enemies and also no 2500 SC but i was getting the Mega Blast ability every 5 seconds so i thought the changes made it on test already.

If they weren't, it would be weird because i got much better results than on day 1.

Hmm now that I see, I don't think the updates have made it to test yet. The only change was wording based.

So yeah, we probably need to wait until it's live to test more.

Round 2 of Testing:

Same as last time. The Player Damage is NOT relevant. This is set to test Quislet with Robot Sidekick and the Voidling from Grimorium Verum.

All Artifacts are 200 (Source Shard, Grimorium Verum, Quislet)
Brawling/MA Weapon Mastery Combos with Precision Specialization (again, NOT being measured)
No Tactical Mods were used to get "baseline" damage under ideal conditions for Quislet.

Loadouts:
Meteor Strike (SC Generator), Fiery Weapon (clipping), Detonate, Godwave, Robot Sidekick, Supercharge (listed in Log Name)

VOD Highlight: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/784387902

4 minute Single-Target w/5000 SC (Neo Venom Boost)
https://dcuolog.com/?log=27dd32fb

4 minute Single-Target w/10k SC (Volcanic Calamity)
https://dcuolog.com/?log=39cdd7ff

4 minute 8 Target w/5k SC (Neo Venom Boost)
https://dcuolog.com/?log=a32f1ac6

For reference, this is the log of 4 minutes with a single-target using Neo-Venom Boost from the previous build:
https://dcuolog.com/?log=94836ff8

...and 8-targets with Vacuum Bubble:
https://dcuolog.com/?log=986e8a47


Impressions:
With the adjustments the problem that Quislet has is that its "cost" is too high compared to its performance. When we compare the output that you get under its "ideal" operating conditions (that is to say, this is the highest potential damage it could have) it still under performs compared to Robot Sidekick, and only barely out performs Voidling.

• Robot Sidekick costs 1 Skill Point, 1 Ability Slot. You summon it, it just does its thing. Free Premium Real Estate.
• Voidling Costs 1 Artifact Slot, and for that you get an AoE Power Interaction setup along with the damage it does.
• Quislet, to not even compete with Robot Sidekick, costs 2 Artifact slots (for itself, and Source Shard), requires Rank 200 on Both Artifacts, 2 Ability Slots (for Godwave and a SC Generator).

This makes Quislet just too inefficient compared to many other options. Even with my current pet-based Damage loadout, Quislet is outperformed by Father Box (and Seahorse, Mother Box, etc), with Grimorium Verum (160) and Source Shard (200).

So, that means that Father Box-class trinket pets have a better return-on-investment than a 200 Ranked Quislet Artifact, by an order of magnitude. Again, I can't emphasize the 200 Rank on the Artifact.

Suggestions:

• Have Quislet get Mega Blast at Rank 80, and have its cooldown scale with Artifact Level (5/4/3/2 seconds).
• Increase Quislet's Ranged Attack damage, or increase the base damage of Mega Blast.
• Refractal Beam could use a minor increase in its Single-Target damage given you're asking for a 10k SC, which will be inefficient for many (not all) loadouts, and increases the demands of Quislet to require the SC Generator (with a 5k SC, you can at least optionally not use one).

Batuba, I just tested after the changes 2 scenarios:

1. Grim, Source, Quislet and my rotation was averaging over a 30 sec parse 67500

2. Grim, Source, Dead King's Scepter with Dark Construct Bat out and my rotation was averaging over a 30 sec parse 79,500

In both scenarios there are 3 pets out but as noted above and in my own testing the trinket pet does way more dmg than the Quislet. Also the Scepter has other benefits like its proc and trinket cooldowns.

It would be on thing if the Quislet was equal to another arti but it massively underperforms still.

One thing I note is that my above tests did not use a super (as fitting a super on my bar results in a net dps loss anyway) but even if it was, I doubt the rare extra benefit from the super would make up for the dps loss over time of a fight. Also, I guess you could still use a trinket pet with quislet but you would then have 4 pets out and the dps increase from godwave might not hit Fury or Crystal.

Just make the quislet a reskin on dark bat construct that is just out the entire time you are using abilities