(Existing Powersets) strengths and weaknesses Rework/Update abilities!

Give some abilities from any existing powersets that you would like to see potentially reworked, fixed or added.

Powerset: Atomic
Reworks: Anti-Matter bomb, Unleash Anti-matter, Irradiate, Atomic Blast SC, Radiation Burn SC, Geiger Blast and Atom-Powered Assault.

Added Abilities: 300 power cost DOT, AOE, 12 tick pool that did more damage to dazed enemies, ranged 300-400 power cost nuclear explosion (like Munitions' Nuke) that did more damage to dazed enemies and a multi target 200 power cost ability (like Electricity's Overcharge) that builds up energy before exploding and damaging nearby enemies. Dazed enemies would take more damage. Like pre-stats revamp, make (Atom-Powered Assault) do explosive might tick damage and increased damage to dazed enemies.

Update: The animation of (Atom-Powered Assault) weapon buff into the version that is located on the select your power customization screen for Atomic when creating your character. The animation of Atom Splitter, Neutron Bomb and Nuclear Burst needs an update as well in my opinion.

Nobody at all? Really? That's concerning.

*shrug* Best to leave game design to professionals...

That goes without saying but you're telling me there's nothing that you could suggest from them to possibly fix, add or update? That seems unreasonable.

It's perfectly reasonable. Good players learn the game and adjust their playstyle, not waste time coming up with ways for the game to adapt to them. There are a few balance issues, which I'd like to see addressed, mostly centered around certain OP artifacts, but by now everyone knows what they are and I don't particularly care that much anyway. If I don't like how some powersets are designed - I just don't use them.

I think atomic needs work too and I’ve made some suggestions in other threads the thing is we are all going to have different ideas. Ultimately it’s up to the developers.

My suggestions are sorta basic ones for atomic

Add an instant aura ability to two existing abilities for tank and dps (destiny for tank, and apa for dps or another ability)

Make ionizing eruption a 12 tick dot

Add 3 tick dot in dps stance and 3 tick hot in tank stance to atom splitter. (Big heal and damage front loaded)

Make beta surge full range add a 3 tick dot in dps stance and hot in tank stance (the big damage and heal is front loaded)

Make Geiger blast full range doing more damage while the aura is up and damage gets weaker the further out you are from the target. (If they make this like mass det or fire burst then make it usable while mobile but interruptible) change animation so it’s more “boomy”

Change energize to work more like circuit breaker or ice elemental (preferably the latter since it would be usable in tank stance as well)

Turn fracture into a shield (would be a fun ability to use in tank stance (could give us a new looking aura that disappears once the shield breaks (could also make this an instant aura ability)

Wouldn’t mind if all abilities are usable while mobile (unless there’s impossible for combos then in that case let us block cancel during combo due to tanking issues)

Remove daze pi and have All abilities do more damage while aura is up


These are my ideas

Doesn’t have to be exactly they don’t want the power to be op if that makes it op but I think most of what I suggested is already used on other power sets

That's not necessarily the case. There can be powersets that you love but even then you can not be biased and call out it's flaws. How does any game grow or expand when there are individuals that say there's nothing wrong with certain powers, yet those same powers are the most untouched in the game? That doesn't make you look credible my friend.

You must've missed the part where not too many people are playing Atomic. It is a powerset in need of a rework and it is a powerset that is unpopular. Those are facts with statistics behind them not what I think. I'm not putting the blame on you but for your response to be what it was, I don't think it was fair and now I see why there is yet to be any real change in the game.

There are people on the forums who truly want the best for this game but then there's the people who always show up and say everything is fine the way it is and nothing has to be changed. You realize that some of the Dev team skim through these threads, right? When they see people like you that say everything is fine, they think to themselves that there is no need to make change because you supposedly like what's presented to you already.

However, if this was filled with comments from players about powersets they want to see actually fixed or changed, it would most likely be something they would put on their "to do" lists instead of brushing it off to the side. You don't even realize that you're hurting the game by not wanting change to occur.

No hard feelings but I think there has been some damage done because players of your similar mindset have made people's efforts to be insignificant.

I like your ideas. The only thing I don't understand is why wouldn't you allow it to do the same damage from all ranges?

I don’t know if it’s still the case but I believe every power still works this way

A few years ago they updated the way damage is done there was full range mid range and melee range

Melee range was the highest damage a power can hit for mid range it would get slightly less and full range it would get even less in how hard the damage hits for

I believe this also affects crits.

Some one correct me if I’m wrong

But the further out you are the less damage you’ll be doing.

There's several bugs with the powersets. One I see off the top of my head is shared by a particular animation. The same animation that fire, sorc and few other sets seem to have when casting the animation that is used by sorc's soul well. If you're on the ground and the target is flying, a bug in the script for the sequence causes your character to jump. There are other animation errors as well that occur when flying. Casting certain powers while moving can lock you into moving forward only for a second or two until the animation finishes.

Other animation issues I have are with any cast ability that forces your character to inch forward. Id' like these to have that forward movement removed so it doesn't become a relocation issue over the duration of a rotation loop. Matter of fact I think that same buggy animation mentioned above does this, too.

I'd also like the rifle's lunge attack to be swapped with the actual lunge attack (overhead smash?). If I remember right Two Face's legends character has this but it's not a part of the rifle's regular moveset. Instead the rifle's lunge has been a a ranged attack since forever. (Though TBH, i'd want the entirety of the rifle's moveset reworked. Too many flashy flips and not enough actual emphasis on ranged attacks and variety. A sniper round, shotgun blast, etc could be worked into its moveset, especially with how Deathstroke's Legends introduction introduced an aimed sniper shot from a rifle as an ability).

Weapon Mastery itself is another eyesore. Never been happy with how it was implemented and how it basically ruined weapon play. I feel that WM should have stayed within the bounds of the single weapon, empowering all the weapon's unique combos. Maybe bring back the old 'zing' SFX at the end of any weapon combo finisher so that it converts any power offensive power used at that tail end into precision damage. As the game is also no longer bound to the limitations of the PS3's 256mb memory issue, having an actual 2nd weapon slotted that can be switched to with a brief cooldown (if that's even needed anymore) would be great. When you take a look at competing titles like Phantasy Star Online 2, a direct F2P competitor on consoles and PC, they allow the very thing, and even allow mixing of weapon abilities on top of that. Definitely needs a review, at least if and when any new gen version in the works. A lot of the old 'we're out of memory' issues with powersets having animations butchered or replaced could eventually be undone, which could include the return of abilities being utilized via the weapon used by the player (especially if the WM 'zing' attacks above are restored)

Now that you mention it, there is a similar issue with Atomic's Neutron Bomb that makes you move ever so slightly forward after every completed combo loop. Weapons are also something I really, really hope gets looked into as well. So many weapons that go untouched nowadays is a bit worrisome.

From my personal testing this is no longer the case. I do an estimate of the same range of damage from every form of range possible.

lol...

No offense, but I think that "players of your similar mindset", who fool themselves into believing, that their feeble grasp on game mechanics and basic maths allows them to provide valuable input into game's design are why devs don't take threads like this one seriously, or even read them.

No hard feelings.

Actually they do… a few years back me and a few other forum members pushed and pushed to get earth fixed this was just before amazon fury 1 was released when they updated earth. We pushed so much that that finally fixed earth seeing the problems we discussed with it. One of the devs and I spoke in a dm at length about earth they finally made earth dpsing viable using crystal when before this earth was basically in the same spot atomic was as far as people using it (albeit atomic is in a way better spot than earth was as far as dps goes) but also they fixed the tanking which needed lots of work. One thing in particular we petitioned for was to make sure after shock tanking was viable the initial changes to earth were just going to be pet tanking fixed and leave aftershock tanking basically broken beyond use, we begged them to fix Jack hammer tanking too because that’s how most people wanted to tank with earth at the time, they listened and earth was not only viable but one of the most popular powers especially for tanking at that time because of how fun it was.

So yes they do listen and take threads like this seriously and will make changes accordingly.

I think the problem facing developers in any MMO, is when does listening to the suggestions bog the game down in a weekly update changing powersets, unbalancing roles, and constantly fixing things. I'm not saying there aren't situations when fixes aren't needed, there most certainly are, but how do you prioritize fixing balance issues, over players wanting changes for the sake of changes.

I know they do listen, and I'm fairly certain many of these issues come up in discussion, but I suspect there's a triage of what's needed, and what's wanted.

I work in the hospitality industry. I regularly read comment cards, and a lot of them have amazing suggestions. Some of them were simply impractical. I remember one, I looked into, it was timer controlled heating and cooling. Fantastic suggestion, but the reality was, it would have cost well over a million dollars, for a change that very few people would notice. At the same time, I made a list of renos I wanted to do. It would have cost well over 4 million dollars, and not a single person would have noticed, but the hotel would have been much more energy efficient, and the water pressure would have dramatically improved on one floor. Again, not something anyone would notice.

It has always seemed strange to me that some players believe that the Devs don't read the forums, I read a lot of the threads that get posted and always enjoy seeing the conversation unfold.

As for the specific content of the thread, I would say the assessment that players don't make skilled designers to be half true and half untrue, players often intimately understand their power-set far more than the Devs would, but their judgement can sometimes be clouded with desire for power of their specific playstyle and can leave their feedback and suggestions pointed.

That being said a good designer can break down the request and observe what parts are actionable and take a look at the greater systems at play to formulate an actionable plan and begin the process of moving forward.

While I often think about ability reworks, its something that takes a gentle hand and a firm understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the powerset lest they end up working against their setforth goals.

I enjoy threads like these because they offer me additional insight about powers that I don't spend enough time analyzing
(Little fun fact is that my first character was actually an Atomic DPS, but even then I'd say I only had roughly 60-80 hours played with them and didn't fully understand the game systems at the time.)

I truly appreciate you for reaching out to this thread. I know it's probably rough for all of you at the moment but as someone who has also played Atomic, will you and the team consider this down the road?

I wanted to mention that a lot of us enjoy it the way it is. Me and my friends enjoy teaming up to take care of it. Until we lost 2/3rds of our league, the current system brought us together because several of us were just playing alone because we didn’t need help.
Also, there’s a lot of people that understand Devs read the forums, but it’s not always possible or necessary (for want of a better word) to reply to every post, thread or comment.
The reason y’all largely don’t hear us talking about how we are definitely feeling the aster is because those that are happy or satisfied tend to stay quiet. Especially considering my program would be spamming “this is great, keep up the great work” each day and y’all already have Negative Nancy’s spamming negative stuff.

What I’m saying is that me and the people I interact with are traught, whelmed and feeling the aster. Keep up the great work and if my program had emotional circuits I’m sure I’d love you guys.

I will say that atomic, could use a little adjustment on its damage side.I used to play atomic, but switched it after finding it to fall a little shy of glory (that and I prefer healing with the exception of Rage, always #1 it'll be). I would have to have an atomic character and get to the sparring targets for a few hours to remember which powers I ended with.

Water could use a little love, mainly it's SC generator, it's an extremely weak dot. Most people think water to be relatively weak, but I've found a very strong rotation and artifact combination that makes it very competitive, with the exception of the SC generator lol.