GU 43: Light Construct Combo Advanced Mechanics

Please use this thread to discuss and give feedback about Light Construct Combo Advanced Mechanics. Preliminary update notes:

• Light Combo Advanced Mechanic: Chaining together consecutive Construct Combos for a period of four seconds or more causes significantly increased damage until the combo chain is broken. While causing increased damage in this manner, Construct Combos begin inflicting and become vulnerable to counter mechanics.
• Light Power Points Reset: Due to changes in the Light Support tree, Light users will find their power points reset and fully refunded.
• Chainsaw: Chainsaw's hold melee Construct Combo is now named Threatening Chainsaw. The Fear effect should apply more reliably to enemies when using Threatening Chainsaw. Improved the crowd control effect for the 1st hit of the Construct Combo version. The melee damage from this attack now hits in a 180 degree cone. All Chainsaw attacks now split damage like a super power, rather than like a basic melee attack. Chainsaw can now combo into Light Claws.
• Light Claws: The melee damage from this attack now hits in a 180 degree cone. All Light Claw attacks now split damage like a super power, rather than like a basic melee attack. Improved the crowd control effect for the 1st hit of the Construct Combo version. The final hold melee construct combo is now known as Final Claw, while all attacks which begin the combo are now properly named Light Claws. Final Claw can now combo into the Swing attack from the Entrap ability
• Fan: Increased the angle of the damage cone from 10 to 60 degrees. Fan can now combo into Impact. Adjusted input timings slightly so combos can be performed more reliably out of Fan.
• Minigun: Minigun can now combo into Ram. The Construct Combo version of Minigun may now be performed while moving.
• Ram: Ram can now combo into Fan.
• Boxing: The melee damage from this attack now hits in a 180 degree cone. All Boxing attacks now split damage like a super power, rather than like a basic melee attack. Improved the crowd control effect for the 1st hit of the Construct Combo version. Boxing can now combo into Chainsaw.
• Entrap: Entrap has switched places with Hand Clap in the support tree and provides a 35% damage bonus in Damage role. All Swing attacks now split damage like a super power, rather than like a basic melee attack. Swing now combos into Chainsaw.
• Hand Clap: Hand Clap has switched places with Entrap in the support tree and provides a 40% damage bonus in Damage role.
• Impact: Impact can now combo into Light Blast.
• Light Blast: Light Blast can now combo into Minigun. The Construct Combo version of Light Blast may now be performed while moving.

You are the man....#TunsoAndCrewForTheWin......I love this new mechanic! Remember that long post I made when you introduced the powerback mechanic? You understood and listened to every point I made. Congrats guys! Can't wait to update the Hardlight guide with this info!

Ok so far I found two bugs.

1) You can jump cancel Lightblast and Miniguns from the tray but the combo versions you can't....the only ways to escape the animations would be by executing range attacks or holding block...is this intended? I can't record video so I don't know how to show you this.

2) There's still missing messaging explaining the power back mechanic, the new combo mechanic, Chompers doing extra damage to dazed enemies, and Lightblast is not identified as a finisher when it clearly is one under 35% health.

Still playing around with everything but the combo system is great I love it. Will post more results and stats as I continue.

EDIT: I now see the messaging of the combo mechanic on the left side where the power description is at. Nevermind what I said about that.

EDIT2: Could the reason that you can't jump cancel Lightblast/Miniguns unless you block/range be so that you can move around freely with it? That's the new feature so maybe that's why.

The range combo is quite fluid and fun.
The melee combos are so awkward. There is no way to end them early. The only one is hold claw, but if you accidentally do a hold chainsaw too early, you have to do the combo again. Plus, boxing gloves seem to have one too many taps you have to go through. It should be 4 not 5. Very awkward.

My only issue with Light in the past (since the animation balance) was the complete lack of flow from combo to combo. This update fixes all of that and Light is once again a blast to play. I had intended to spend some time with each power tonight but once I tried Light that was it. Before I knew it far too long had passed and it was time to log out.

I do agree with BB that the boxing glove timing feels slightly off. It would also be nice if each melee combo functioned the way claw does with the player deciding when the hold occurs. But even if nothing changes as far as melee goes I will be switching back to Light on one of my alts.

I love this update to Light.

Also DO NOT test on base targets or league targets....for some reason the combos dont hit as hard in there but do they in fact hit hard when in a instance....I don't know if it's because their defense is higher or if it's because they aren't registering our hit counter number.

Defense of league and base targets is much higher than t6 enemies or wt dummies, there's an option on the combat log analyzer to adjust for the defense.


Damage potential of the range combo is really insane, it's probably too good but I don't think you're likely to maintain the combo uninterrupted in a lot of content since you usually have to move, block or something bumps you. When able to combine this combo system with relentlerss precision, the damage out is going to be very high if you can maintain a combo.

The range combo works well and I like that it allows for variation in the endless combo you use, the melee combo is very awkward though and I wish we could pick when to go to the construct rather than counting taps and holding when needed.

Anyway, seems amazing against the dummys but I'm curious how it will do in actual content. It's pretty fun, though.

http://spark.rstudio.com/mezz/dcuo/

On the bottom left table just use that checkmark for when that happens.

So far tested it on the only thing available with bosses at a high level that didn't required a group, Spark of Parallax.

My range combo was Ram-ST-Fan-Inpact-GH-LB-MG-Ram (never though i'd use MG outside of melee), rinse an repeat, to start I used Chompers for the 12 seconds damage boosts.
For Melee I use Claw-Ram-ST-Fan-Claw, rinse and repeat. As you can see I use very simple combos.

Now I didn't use WM, and even though my stats are with T6.5 gear, they are nowhere close to what I'm on Live since I do lack some boosts on test that I have on live, but I wanted it that way anyway, it's good to be a little underpowered on test. So as far as melee combos go, they where awesome, flowing great, and the risk/reward system is more present than ever (couldn't successfully melee a boss long enough to trigger the AM). Being able to interrupt some of the melee chain would be good as it gives us time to avoid being countered, but it is risk/reward so I understand the risk. Range was another story though, since I have Impact it gave me the ability to force adds away from me enough time to hold the combo, then using fan I made sure they where always in range.

In the end the solo took me about 9 minutes, most of it was remembering the sequences for range lol. But did about 900k damage, with no weapon mastery at all (minus 20k for an orbital strike on bleez), my prec was 3.4 (with a flex soder VI regular), might 5.2k (given the combos run on prec damage, I believe it would be wise for anyone modding into Might/prec mods to change back to prec only mods.

So in conclusion so far I like what I've seen, can't say it will be the same on live, probably between now and then something will get lowered, or a combo be changed from what it is now, but as it is right now I'm very happy with it. And I thank the devs for taking light back to it's rightful place.

PS:To me it is in no way OP, so for those who are thinking this will the FOTM, well if you didn't understand light before, try it now but not with the mentality that you will crush Rage or gadgets, this puts light on an even plain field with those, which is all we asked for from the beginning.

While great for Dps, not much has changed for Controllers.

Light Blast- channel can combo into Minigun which is also a channeled power. It would have been better to combo into something clippable like Ram.

Light still has nothing even close to "safe damage" defense debuff:
- Whip Trash from tray shouldnt be vulnerable to block or Chompers/ Spikequake should become a defense debuff instead of Whip Trash.
- Light Blast is vulenerable to interuption and the effect is canceled if u jump or get moved/ pushed out of ur place.
It would be nice if tray Light Blast can be jump canceled but damage and first stun effect are sustained like Gadget's Fear Gas work
(If "finisher" effect has to be removed from Light Blast for that to happen is okay too).

Well Minigun can almost be instantly clipped by Ram, it takes away the damage but takes you back into the control combo.
Also Chompers and SQ already have 2 abilities, stun and PI, giving them a def debuf would just render half the attacks useless in troll mode. And there is a reason it's a risk/reward power, you could change Max Damage with Empowered Channeling which removes the vulnerable to interrupt, I personally haven't tried my combos without it so guess it's worth a shot.

Keep in mind this update is for the AM, which is a DPS side.

I'll say these two things:

-Claws going into Swing feels extremely awkward and the window is small to get by with.
-I'm having trouble sustaining high damage when Inspiration wears off....maybe we should have a HL troller or another DPS run Inspiration to help us? Is there a way we can keep our Inspiration buff without recasting it every 12 seconds?

Had a play around with this on the test server before. Complete rookie to Hard Light. I have an alt who's been Hard Light since November 2011 but I never really learned the power set or developed any habits.

Seems to be working well. I ran the Spark of Parallax Solo after a bit of practice with the combos and I am impressed by it. Not enough to switch my main to Hard Light but enough to blow the dust off my alt and maybe level him up.

Good job.

Here's a little video I recorded of me running Spark of Parallax solo using the new mechanic.

This AM actually forces us to choose between inspiration or plain damage from crits and hits. I don't have it on my rotation, also I made a test without using MD mod and replacing it with empowered channeling, so far I found that the damage is almost the same, give or take a couple of hundreds, but still enough to make not using the mod or inspiration viable.

Yes, but at the same time you could do the Inpact-GH-LB-MG(clip)Ram-Impact combo and at least keep 3 of the troll abilities active while conserving some power, give it's a very power smart group at least.

Just noticed something that could be an issue because of good old lag, the window to go GH-LB is very small, and unlike Fan-Claw which is melee so you usually make the change fast, GH is sometimes not even visible in dps, though you get the damage, but not the graphic, but this windows is very easy to miss and sometimes because of lag I ended up using my weapon range attack, which left me open to counters since EC mod doesn't work on weapons. Could it be made longer, not by a long, but maybe a fraction of a second.

Would be better to just position next to a Rage toon since there would be no risk of overwriting.

Thanks for the info above guys, I decided to test WM>Chompers vs AM clipping vs AM comboing and came up with these results. Did this on a Watchtower Sparring Target. I had mixed prec and might (6400 might and 3300 prec) for the WM and AM clipping and for combo AM I went full prec (3500) with prec neck mod and refreshing Inspiration when it came off cooldown by clipping the combo with it and restarting. I used various combos such as Impact>GH>Fan and Impact>GH>Lightblast>Miniguns>Whiptrash>Handclap>and so on. I always tried to go for hit counter 9 or greater and used Brawlers for quick power/SC regen making it very handy to get a quick SC (I didn't use a SC at all....just wanted to see the power regen results).

AM Clipping


WM>Chompers


AM Combo



I gotta say that our AM comboing makes up for the lack of DoTs our powerset has....so it embraces the burst damage and adds it all up over time. I would say it competes evenly with Gadgets/Electric AM and could possibly surpass by a little bit Sorcery/Rage/Ice WM if you know what you are doing. The problem tends to be that you are vulnerable to counters and interrupts and it could be messed up relatively easy with a chaotic raid.

I want to work on base numbers (to show that it's not OP) so I'll do that when I have time. I also want to try this in a instance against other powers but it's hard to get a raid running that is willing to test.

And I want to add...Tunso could you re-check Final Claw? It seems like the window is way too short to register a tap triangle, a hold range, or a hold square....it is easy to revert to a weapon combo because the window is hard to hit. Could it be possible to extent this window? That may be a reason why Final Claw>Swing feels weird....the other melee combos feel fine to me even though I'll admit it's hard to get used to it due to muscle memory.