First one in? Awesome! ;D Can I just say then that IMO half the reason people get so upset about how the powers are balance, ect... Is because everyone tends to focus on their opinion of how something should, or shouldn't work. look, feel. Instead of talking about how the power behaves compared to all the other powers, and focusing on the numbers. We all have our dreams and opinions of how things ought to be, but accurately testing and gathering facts then conveying them here in advance of the power going live saves us all a world of grief, and time in the long run. Thank you, and don't get testy with me!
Oh one think I did think watching the Live stream, is that the Red trail from the ring... Not to knock it or anything, and say that it looked bad, but it might be a hair long on the trail effect. Also IMO, it would look a little better if it was slightly waved / rippled like the rage effects animations, that would be a better and more unique look. Even if it was the save trail just with a ripple to it instead of a solid trail that would look more like pulsing rage affect than a focused affected. #RageRipple's
The massive Plasma move that makes the mist like effect in a huge area (not sure of the name, currently queued up for Test) that they showed on the Livestream should fade away and fizzle out. As it was on the Livestream, it just instantly disappears and that's really awkward. Other than that though, the powerset seems to look great ! More to come after actual testing.
I was one of the first to log in and I can say Rage seems quite amazing. The thing I was having a problem is I think the mobs I was fighting were tuned wrong, as they were hitting for over 2k so my Rage powers were not even getting a chance to heal the damage before I was pretty much killed. IE, it wasn't activating fast enough to heal the damage. I don't know if it is a delay from the power or maybe lag on the server, but I found myself dead before the Rage Crash happens. When I finally do get a chance to see Rage Crash, it does hit hard. The worst amount of damage I got was over 6k in one crash. Timing is going to be fun, for sure. That's about the extent as I was able to do before I got dissapointed by the white fog effect.
I have some concerns about Rage early on -- and obviously this is very early feedback -- but the powerset seems very "feast or famine" in terms of its tank efficiency and it concerns me. When you look at the basic construction of the damage kit, it's essentially rage mode > cancel rage crash > rage mode, with a couple panic buttons for when you can't quite cancel your rage crash. My concern is that there are some instances where if you are even slightly overgeared for content it becomes COMPLETELY trivial as long as you have power because you can actual HEAL by getting a successful rage cancel in. There were times, for example, doing T5 duos that I would actually pull a pack at half HP and finish the pack at full HP without a Healer touching me. I felt invincible as long as I had power. This is my first concern -- there definitely is a "godmode if I have power" threshold for Rage Light. The flipside is when you get these huge spikes of damage coming in and you can't Rage it out fast enough, you just die unless someone can shield you. This brings me to my second major concern -- you absolutely HAVE to be shielded in certain situations, and when those situations arise, the only option is a spike healer. This means Rage Light is amazing with certain powersets (Hi Nature), okay with others (Celestial, Sorcery), and terrible with one of them (Electricity). My third concern is the scaling health per number of enemies can get RIDICULOUS -- I've gotten as high as 52k HP crashes. There's obviously no reasonable way for a healer to deal with this at all, which makes it entirely the tank + controller show. Fire Tanks already feel like the "bad tanks" right now because they effectively cost more power to heal (I can usually just HoT up an Ice or Earth tank, but I have to spike heal Fire tanks because of their lack of mitigation). This is extra true with Rage light. My fourth concern is how awkward healing a Rage tank is for everyone besides Nature. Nature healers can get their pheromones stacked during the Rage, which leaves them perfectly primed for a Crash with a decently low power cost (if they even need to save a tank from a crash). Compare this to Celestial and Sorcery, who respectively need to burn a decent-sized CD (Divine Light) with a standard heal (Rejuvenation) for an immense amount of power, or simply dump decent power (Sorcery), to deal with it. I am not convince Electricity even has the capacity to spike hard enough to save a Rage tank from crashing. This is even more awkward when you consider how few gaps for Healing there are with Rage tanks, due to the whole "feast or famine' nature of the powerset's design. Either they are taking 0 damage, or they are about to die. This makes powersets like Celestial and Electricity have really awkward gaps where their HoTs are effectively wasted -- at least Nature has the advantage of their HoTs priming their burst heal. Perhaps more testing would confirm this for me, but it did not seem like "overhealing" chipped away at impending crash damage. That very well might be a good way to handle this -- allow my overhealing to effect delayed damage, so that I can heal back some of the damage coming in before it actually comes in. Like I said earlier, there's NO healer in the game that can readily deal with a five-digit crashes coming in, but if I can chip a five-digit crash into a 4 digit crash, that's striking distance at least. That said, Rage Light is an incredibly fun, fluid powerset with a very high skill-cap. While I think perhaps it can use some numbers tuning (maybe? It's hard to tell so early on if it's mechanically OP or numerically OP), it is definitely a breath of fresh air and VERY fun to play.
Why wouldn't the Electric safety net work? Did you try it? In theory, Electric should be a Rage tank's best friend because of the safety net and Electric being 75% burst heals, not HoTs.
Loving it so far. Don't normally DPS but Rage DPS was definitely a lot of fun. Didn't seem to be too difficult to prevent the Rage Crash, especially with added effect of the heartbeat (very nice btw). Still a lot more testing to be done though. So far so good. Nice job!
I feel the cool downs on certain moves should be decrease and have the moves that cause rage to have an increased cool down. Eviscerating chain is considered a pull but with a six second cool down it is not ready when you want it to be since it has a 6 second cool down. That makes it hard to use as a pull. I think the biggest weakness of rage as far as tanking is concerned is being stunned. That can essentially be death in boss battles as you would be facing many adds most of the time. Running the the Ranx OP in un modded lantern gear only provided difficulty with the bosses as they hit hard and CC. Also is it intended that the tray power cancel the crash and one does not have to combo? When I would use E chain I would cancel the crash before initiating the combo. Is that intended? Rage Crash just seems like a more risky shield with no ceiling other than taking more damage than is healed per second. The window for the crash cancel is also fair imo. The only problem is the sound. If there are more than one rage players in the game it is very confusing when all of us are using rage crash. I think it needs to be where we only hear our personal pulse. I would also suggest making all other sounds except for the heartbeat to muted so we can keep better track of the crash during hectic battles.
Well the emergency heal can either be a big help or do nothing for a rage tank. Boss fights = worthwhile and high add situations = not so good. Once you get your health very high a 5k heal isn't going to help.
I've only played Elec up through T3, so I admittedly don't know it that well -- I mostly just HoTTed because I almost NEVER needed to spike heal on my electric healer, and when I did spike it hurt my power pool pretty damn hard. I will edit my post though, I would trust other people's experiences more. Just kidding, I can't edit my previous post.
You jumped on the Electric healing is the worst bandwagon. I don't know if you're trolling, or seriously ignorant. I can't tell if you've even healed as Electric. This is NOT a defense for whether Electric healing as the best, just a FACT that when it comes to "spike" or burst healing, Electric IS the best. 1 - Nature has ticks, yeah well when you're using Savage Growth > Clip Metabolism > Clip Cross Pollination - Blossom - Bloom, you are NOT healing nearly as much as Electric. This is a fact HEALING OVER TIME. We are talking about single burst heals, and nature HoT doesn't do anything. Yeah, you get the bonus healing from HoT consumption, but essentially you got Pollination / Bloom. We all know when things go bad, if you tried to use Bloom with no HoT your group would be dead. The whole idea of HoT on the tank then go to Bloom won't work. You'll have slow healing, and Bloom might not even connect if the tank is dead. 2 - Electricity can HoT, and this isn't a subject of what a power can and can't do. You're talking about burst heal. Get that HoT stuff out of your post talking about being ready to heal. Ridiculous. HEAL OVER TIME. So if the tank needs HP now, HEALING OVER TIME isn't going to save him since he doesn't have time. 3 - Electricity has more burst heals than any other healer. We're talking about INSTANT burst that can be clipped. So an Electric healer can do 4 burst heals in for the animation of a single heal. Sure other healers can clip 4 animations together, but they most certainly do NOT have 4 viable burst heals. Nature - Blossom, Cross Pollination Sorcery - Offering, Rejuvenate, Transmutation Celestial - Renew, Divine Light, and one more which I forgot the name Electric - Arc Lightning, Bio Capacitor, Bioelectric Surge, Galvanize And the thing is, because of the rotations involved with electric healing you can do: Arc Lightning -CLIP- Bioelectric Surge -CLIP- Biocapcitor - CLIP Biolelectric Surge - CLIP- Galvanize -JUMP Cancel (only if close to the tank because radiation immediately stops if you jump cancel, if not close to the tank you have to stop here)- Bioelectric Surge -CLIP- Biocapcitor - CLIP Biolelectric Surge I am very familiar with all FOUR healers. I can tell you right now, the reason why the healers are used is basically for their superior HoT which covers more group members. Electric has mostly sing target which isn't very good for raid situations. Electric's Galavanize has a short range making it less than ideal for spread out Nexus runs, HOWEVER if you're going to say Electricity has the LEAST burst on one character, then you are out of your mind. Fact is, no healer needs as much burst healing that Electricity offers which is why the other healers get by on easy mode HoT with 2 burst healing in their loadouts. 4 - You're right, healer's can't heal dead. If he rage crashes and dies then it doesn't matter. 5 - I think they mentioned something about being able to heal the rage crash pool. I don't know the specifics, but it's pretty obvious if you were the best player in the world you'd have god mode all the time so Rage Crash has to happen at some point. Ice can't actually keep their shields up all the time without dipping into the iconic tree, Fire can't self heal with unlimited power, earth can't mitigate 100% damage or stack 40% aftershock reduction then 30% damage shift. The tanks have to be able to die, and Rage Crash is expected. 6 - Seriously, don't talk about Electric healers. Pretty well known fact that they are burst healers.
Didn't spend too much time with it tonight since it was practically midnight by the time I got on. I was messing around with the DPS side and was able to do one of the solo missions on the Duty tab. I didn't notice any serious lack of damage and got through the whole thing pretty well. One exception was my mistime of the Rage crash function and get wiped out pretty hard at the end of a mob wave. The whole heartbeat thing is a nice touch and helps me time the usage of my crash ignore ability pretty well, though I couldn't help but fill my entire loadout bar right now with rage crash ignoring abilities to help myself ease in. XD So pretty good so far. I didn't notice anything unusually wrong with the power, but I only had a short time with it so I will give it another go when I have the chance tomorrow.
Aside from the part about Electricity healing, I'm pretty much in agreement. These are similar to the concerns I had just from hearing about the mechanic weeks ago. Since I mainly heal, I fully expect to have some serious struggles healing new Rage tanks in the coming months.
I think you will find it is not as different as you think. I felt like a fire tank with a something extra to tell the truth.
