Test Discussion Atomic Powers

*cough* still waiting on tank buff *cough* xD

@Roomba THANKS! I have seen a lot of parses coming in lately not showing details like stats or what targets you're hitting. It helps a lot to show your work like you did.

If you need the whole damage summary for my parses I can retrieve them. I just thought if I put 126 live might spec on 3 targets that would suffice

This is of utmost concern regarding Atomic Power. Devs please do a major tweak/fix on Atomic Tanking based on tested feedbacks posted here by trusted credible testers before it goes live, coz it's a bit alarming that it will be released on live soon and yet there hasn't been a major tweak/fix on Atomic Tanking with its mitigation issues and tanking mechanics in general. We don't want Atomic power to be released, bought, and used only to DPS.

This. I don't know if it's the power out the player but every atomic tank I heal feels like I am healing a dps with a bigger health pool.

Right now I will just assume it's the players.

I don't know if it is just me or if it has been addressed earlier (60 pages is a lot to read through...) but i find that nuclear pressure stacks and the QG aura drop off far too fast, essentially I suffer from lag occasionally but even without lag a single microsecond stun from anywhere turns geiger blast from a 40-100k hit to a 2-6k hit and prevents the refresh of the aura depending on which am i use.

Is this intended? At the moment it seems to me like atomic punishes lagging players far more than any other power, certainly more than any 1234 power with the geiger loadout due to this extremely fast drop rate for stacks.

Could it not be changed so that pressure stacks (at least but preferably the aura too) have slightly longer durations so that a seconds lag or a stun doesn't utterly destroy our dps potential? The only other power like this i can think of is light whose 4 second charge up is so badly affected by interruptions.

I love this new power and would like to change to it, but at the moment it isn't viable as a dps power for me in content where there are insane numbers of stuns (like the new duo for instance) since if i am not stunned in a rotation i will probably lag for half a second but that's enough to make me hit like a feather rather than an atom bomb... even a 2 second duration increase would be enough to make this potentially work through minor lag.

For now though it seems ice is still going to be the only power i can play PvE with since the lag/stun has little effect on dps.

The geiger AM works exactly like mental (which of course is not too dissimilar to quantum and gadgets, but most similar to mental), I haven't "felt" any differences here. Since APA clips, you can always keep it off cooldown during your rotation, which may mitigate (ooh, I said the dirty word!) some of your connection issues.

I could see why the combo may be more difficult with a shoddy connection, but video games pander to pushing the limits of their average users tech, which usually includes a stable connection unfortunately. Your best bet, if using this power, sounds like the geiger am

The issue I have is not the connection, but that doesn't matter. I have been able to play rage and celestial using combos thru the minor lag without issue, the problem I am having here is simply not enough time to complete the inputs if hit by even minor lag or a stun.

However as you say I would expect that even if combos were not viable through lag that Geiger would be. But it isn't. The nuclear pressure stacks fall off too fast so that only a perfect rotation can work. Combine that with Geiger's essentially turret mode and you can't move while doing this am. A small increase of a few seconds to the duration of the nuclear pressure stacks would both fix this issue and also mean it would be potentially possible to move in the rotation if needed.

I assume you heal tanks who combo no matter whats going on. I used to do the same. Had conversations with different healers how they actually feel and we came to the conclusion just run 1 combo for refresh (Atom Splitter is my choice) and block and farm immunity (or even lunge if appropriate). It's better and you dont eat all the time the full end combo of the boss or a harder hitting add. Just need to time it right and pray that you dont get interrupted. Interruption is still a serious problem that needs to be adressed. The 15% CC Resistance doesnt solved that problem apparently =/

While mine sounds like a basic turtle tank, its not. You have to active read enemies. Act appropriate and also the Atom Splitter CD is really low you can basically combo and clip the last with any power and then wait 0.5 seconds and start already all over again. It's way more active than just combo 1 > combo 2 > combo 1 > combo 2 > repeat.

This looks more along the lines of the results I got from my testing comparing the two AMs. I don't understand how people are getting better numbers with the Advanced Interactions AM. Also wasn't the damage from the first tap in the Combo lowered so just using single tabs when using the AM wasn't better than double tabs?

That is a big problem and concern. Hopefully spord can address it without breaking the power. As it stands right now this isn't the tank power I first thought it was.

Oh you're right. That's really effing dumb.

Do you think this might be intentional so as not to give combo users that "unfair disadvantage" we've all been talking about?

I hope not, that's a silly bandaid.

I'm thinking a little of both.

Atomic Tanks really do play differently (kudos, spord!) They're definitely at their best when not blocking. This takes some getting used to, and a lot of tank players will likely not understand it at first.

That having been said, many times you spend power and get no healing at all, because you're interrupted before you can get a single combo off. And getting countered when you're trying to combo sucks (though now at least you still get the heal). Since your mitigation is self-heals, you pretty much always need to be burning through power in a fight, and when your power gets too low all you can do is block-- and atomic is worse than any other tank when blocking. All tanks have trouble when they're controlled, but atomic seems to be worse than the others, because not only can't you heal yourself when knocked down, but in general you have to get up and go into some combos to get any healing.

It's late to be making big changes, but I would suggest that instead of each combo healing for 20% of your dominance the benefit gets staggered-- like 10% when the power is cast, 15% on the first combo, and 20-25% on the second. This would buff the combo healing by 5-10% of your dominance but only if you managed to get both combos off.

well this is a relief. if thats the case, you just saved me money and time on this game. im not wasting either on a new power that plays basically like every other tank power in game. farming immunities is nothing new and should be a staple of all tank strategy. so hit tank buff, hold block, farm immunity, repeat..... this cant be the same old strategy intended for this power, can it?

I think that just makes it worse because then you are getting larger total heals but it's spaced out more meaning the 5% is only effective if the initial 10 or 15% wasn't immediately countered by the damage you are taking in. Right now having it all front loaded means you get a bigger burst of health at the beginning to counter any damage you took before hand which is good. If anything we should get larger heals from attacks so instead of 2% health it should be 5 or 8%. Atomic also needs more hots other than photon remedy. Hots are good because it's a single click for sustained healing and helps when you get knocked out of a combo you are still getting SOME heals. I think adding an additional 6s hot when gaining a nuclear pressure stack equal to 2% health would help alot. That way if you are interrupted you still have the 2% health heal ticking while you get back up and back into a combo. It also makes your active comboing more important and improves survivability while comboing.

I doubt its intended but how the combos work its the way to go. The problem is you get way too often interrupted. People will be anoyed and switch back rather to deal with it. You pull some adds and a random add behind others might random block on your melee combo. Boom you are down on your butt. Okay, lets get smth going with a blockbreaker instead, boom another add just lunged you. Thats actually worse then running into a blocking add so not recommendable, might even end up with your death. Too many adds doing different things at the same time will destroy the flow of this powerset massively. Others just don't have the issue. Farming immunities through block or lunge increase your suvivability beyond standard combo - combo - combo - oh well you get it. If an add blockbreaks you get lucky out of a few very rare situations when running a melee combo at right that time and not getting interrupted from another add.

But even a trash add attack can knock you up our of your combos easily. To play it at maximum level you want as less adds as possible and thats kinda a joke. All other tank powersets will laugh at you ^^

What if we get some single target combo options? I'm thinking make fracture have some combos and it be the single target melee option. The range doesn't need single target because you can't be screen interrupted just screen blocked.

Edit: would also be pretty sweet if we had a combo that could block counter melee users so we can combo for heals while countering adds or bosses doing melee combos.

i had a reply typed out but it was just rehashed ideas and points from pages before. i think as is, atomic tanking is a nice idea, but it just doesnt work as well as any other tank power already in game. which is a shame because the idea sounds awesome.

I don't think it's the strategy intended for the power. Unless they are constantly being crowd-controlled, Atomic Tanks can stay out of block and combo until they are about to take an extreme amount of damage (at which point they had better have proton recovery or density off cool down or they're in real trouble) or they run out of power (in which case they are also in real trouble).

Staying in block just long enough to get an immunity prevents some of the crowd control issues I talked about before. However,, there are problems with that strategy, because your immunity doesn't last long enough to get through more than half a combo, and Atomic does worse than any other tank while blocking. Every second you stay in block is a loss for you unless you have proton recovery or density active -- and you need to save those for spike damage. Fortunately, blocking is NOT the only way to get immunity. Atomic can block-break and interrupt using its powers, and I'm sure that's what Spord had in mind when he put this together.

All tanks need to block, and that's just the way of the game. In fresh end-game content and Survival mode, pretty much all damage is spike damage. Ice and Earth can get away with blocking a lot less than Fire, but they still have to block a lot. Rage can get by not blocking 8 seconds out of 10 -- way less than Ice or Earth, but they still need to block. With Atomic Tanks for the most part the less they block the better they do-- which I'm afraid means they'll have a lot of trouble with harder content.