Combo powers = too much work?

This of course is the perfect and optimal scenario, but complete and perfect balance in pretty much any MMO is impossible. Powers constantly need to be fiddled with and updated with new content in mind (ie Celestial's new grace period)

Adding to this, old powers tend to be changed even if there is isn't necessarily a problem with them. I assume devs like to do this to keep those old powers new and exciting. If none of the powers i play were ever fiddled with, updated or changed, I would most likely get pretty dang bored.

Also consider how small the dev team is now and how large of an endeavor that is.


But to answer your question Fatal Star, Yes i do agree that combo/prec based powers should have slightly higher scaling, and i mean slightly, nothing that hopefully wouldn't cause a mass power switch, but a slight edge that would add a much needed feeling of satisfaction for your practice with the higher skill powers.

How about we balance the powers to as eaual as possible and allow players a variety of play styles. U wanna go mind numbingly easy like ice ok. U wanna be active and add challange such as celestrial fantastic. Variety but no neither deserves any type of reward. Close vs distant is plenty good. If u dont know the attacks and need to hide far away hoping the boss attacks anyone but u well u should do less damage. The reward for knowing the fight and being able to get up in the fights spot on imo

Lol should i do the most damage out of all powers if i use a pet? Come on u might be comboing but two people hitting one targets greater then one person hitting a target right.

Easiest "Yes" I have ever put on the forums.

I tried tofind the post from Mepps addressing this very point, but my forum-search-skills are lacking this morning.

Basically he said, powers were originally designed with your suggestion in mind. Powers that are harder to use would have a higher damage potential than easier ones. They discovered that the community did not see this as "balanced" and decided to try to balance all powers based on damage potential. So the regardless of what power you chose, or why, every player would have the same "potential".

This was in one of the threads about the current balancing program to shed greater insight into what they were doing & why. I'll try to find the post & will update with a link when/if I do.

I would like to point out that prior to Quantum update in February 2015, that top 3 powers require extension working knowledge of the power and produce really good damage: Light, Gadgets and Nature.

Gadgets had a tagging system and did really good with damage if you missed your tag target you lost your damage potential. Very good powerset that required some level of skill.

Light AM is known and took a bit to use and get the most out of as a DPS.

Nature was fun and like Light took some skill to get the most out as a DPS power.

Now Quantum came out and next thing we know all powers damage potential should be that of Quantum. That resulted in a change of the testing method and it was not until well after GU47 that a discovery around max damage mod was made that we all learned it was broken. Also we learned that TB was able to crit along with the boosted damage of abilities used prior to it resulting in double crits on TB.

Quantum was so broken when it launched that it hurt all the prior hard work that the development team completed that Ice got updated and ended up producing much better numbers. Mental damage was lower than the other 3 powers listed above because it was less complex but due to player wanting everything to be equal in damage, it was adjusted upward in damage.

Than GU50 happened and what has been fixed for Nature or Electric since that time to get them inline with other powers. Remember the Tunso quote about releasing a power under performing and adjusting later to get inline; Electric and Nature are still waiting on that fix and we are now close to a year.

Now both powers look like they are another 5+ months out before they are fixed.

I hate what Quantum did to this game. It ruined everything that was already completed and now we have two of the worst powers that will see 18+ month of no adjustments. Sad that both powers have not even gotten some type of damage adjustment for the refresh ability.

The powers now are seen as "balanced" in the devs eyes. Combo powers already have the same potential as the rest. Yet you come on the forums and people call combo powers bottom tier and say there's no way they can keep up. Not trying to sway your opinion, we're all entitled to our own, but I'm just letting you know now they already are "equal" and take a look at the results.

I'm already aware of this. Hence my paragraph on powers in the past. But times have changed. We have a different player base then we did before. Maybe it's time to revisit it.

You have to be one with your controller, keyboard and mouse

EYES, EARS, HANDS, AND FINGERS! ALL MUST BE ONE!

I thought the post I'm referring to was written this year. Regardless, the point made by the devs still has value. Make the powers potential equal, let the player's ability/skill determine their effectivness. If a player finds a power too difficult to use they can create a new character (free), or change their character's power (MP token).

In regards to player base. New players come & old players leave. So just who is this player base you keep referring to? How many people make it up? How is their skill level measured? How often is that data updated? Saying the player base is more skilled now is a completly subjective opinion without any data to support it.

So keep all the power's damage potential equal. That way when the player base changes again (and again, and again) they all have the same potential.

Yes nature was brought into line, but it was still slightly underperforming in short fights. However electric even with GU50 was severely behind. And GU47 completely destroyed whatever buff GU50 gave those powers. Which puts us to electric being behind for 2+ years once Episode 27 is launched. Quantum probably wont see fixes until mid 2017.

So in these next 6 months with no new content, can we even expect or hope that these powers will be fixed.

Combo powers are suffering right now even still. Especially rage. Combo powers are up there, but no where near where they should be in terms of the dps department.

HL and celestial can compete, but standing side by side comparison to ice or mental you have to ask the question are they underpowered or is Ice and mental overpowered. But in reality all these "problems" come from the scoreboard which puts players against eachother in a PVE setting where players should be working together, but instead they are working against eachother to compete on a scoreboard with no rewards.

Other games that have scoreboards like CoD or Destiny grants bonus rewards/xp/achievements for being in the top or top 3.

Here in DCUO, it only gives temporary satisfaction. And I hope Jack finds a way to either get rid of it or enhance it greatly.

ice isnthenperfect damage power set in the fact that ...

1. It's got virtually no set up time you hit cold snap and boom you're ready to start using yourn advanced mechanic

2. It doesn't lose its am as fast as other powers do there is a huge grace period for it between mobs

3. It's mobile even tho it's basically just like a advanced power in the fact that you have the set up love then if you want you can use ice bash (buff) wintry tempest... (Which takes no time to get all 4 of those out) and then just Avalanche or Arctic gust your way to hitting cold snap again ....

The power set has everything you want Ina damage power there's virtually no draw back ....

Where as say atomic for instance if you want to combo you have to do 3 combos of crap damage on a mob then short cut to your aura then Gomito your rotation at that point the mob is dead ... And you basically are going to lose the aura by the time you get to the next mob .... Atomics advanced pi option is no better as its stationary

In my opinion mobility should never have been a advanced mechanic... That should have been applied to every power... It would have come in handy for both support and dps roles helping you get out of harms way with out stopping what you are doing ....

Also ice keeps its am longer then most of the powers either all the powers should have their ams like that or none of them do ...

LMAO Our league founder did this in PB once on Dr. Light. A mate was beating him in damage and he "didn't see him" go down and didn't pick him up in time. We busted his chops for it. It was all in good fun, but I have to wonder.....

I just hope that upcoming Weapon Balance will shake Dps things up, give us an alternative ways to do damage.
I'd like to see WM being slightly stronger dmg source as well as 'old school' clipping and basic weapon combos.
This superiority of AMs is killing this game, IMO combo powers are the most enjoyable ones (yes, dreadful blast spam sucks), though the reward is the same, you feel being cheated for putting much more work seeing the same or even worse outcome.

If they don't get rid of it completely (which is preferable since as of now the scoreboard serves no function other then "who's top dps") the if they enhance it they need to make
It to where you can't simply click the scoreboard screen during a fight and see who is out performing who... There shouldn't be a total damage out ... It should be a "damage on mobs" damage on boss fights, dot damage etc the damage needs to be broken down this will kill he scoreboard competitions which is what needs to be done

I am hoping for it to be an additional option however I worry that like before ... They will over buff it and then the only way to do good damage is through wm

coming from an atomic user i despise combos!!

He's said it numerous times, problem is it's a lie, they give 1234 powers way more damage potential without any work than combo powers, it doesn't matter if you use Light, Rage or Celestial (Atomic is an exception), your combos would still under perform compared to Gadgets, Munitions, Ice, and even Pet powers (which for the life of me I still don't know why devs think they need a buff). Truth is you can't have balance if a power that's force to be at 0m still does less damage than a power at 13m spamming one attack, and combos get interruptions which of course isn't the case with the rest, and after the interruption even though you have 3 seconds to attack your first hit it still might, meaning you are losing a lot of damage from that one attack, other powers don't have to worry since it's only 1 attack they have to worry about.

Until the day actually being at 0m means I'll do more damage than players at anything beyond that happens, combo powers will not be anywhere near balanced.

If it has everything, wouldn't that make it perfect?

This thread, and by extension my posts to it, does not claim that powers are equally balanced in regards to damage potential. Only that the devs are currently trying to equally balance all powers around total damage potential ('currently trying' being the keys words to indicate that the work is still in progress). The OP suggests a return to damage potential based on a power's difficulty to use. I support the dev's current approach. So I have no idea why you chose to post whatever point you're trying to make as a reply to my post.

Also, next time you want to call a person or group liars, provide some evidence to support your assertion . Otherwise, it's just a baseless insult, which only diminishes the credibility of your post.

isn't there enough evidence already that conbo powers arent actually being treated as they said?, do you still think they are actually going to balance powers when after every single change conbo powers get left behind?. I responded to you and it relates to the OP because yeah if i do more work i should have more damage,but i responded to you because of what Mepps said which to this day after 2 years is still to be seen, and there is no reason why conbo powers should be weaker. But you already took their side and will defend them even though they are leaving combo powers behind in favor of easy damage powers.