GU 43: Mental Advanced Mechanics

well mass lev is now a pretty awesome cc so we cud probably live without the panic

change to tk shield? did i miss something? lots of changes so i may have not seen it...could you point me in right direction for what change is?

edit - nm...think i found it...3 hits in 3 secs? etc etc...correct?

i cant see why you would destroy mentals TK shield ... 3 hits arent enough to pick up...

That patch note is wrong and should have been removed. TK Shield ended up not changing.

Thank you!

Powers

• Advanced Mechanics

o The following abilities will now grant supercharge regen for 4 seconds when hitting a target as part of the advanced mechanic:

 Gadgets - Paralyzing Dart / EMP Pulse

 Fire - Flame Cascade / Mass Detonation

 Ice - Arctic Gust / Avalanche

 Mental - Mass Levitation / Mass Terror

Now Mental will have the ability to regen SC faster while using AM, but Mental still keep the unchanged Telekinetic Bolt a power that you must be close to the target and dont cause a good damage(high risk and low reward) and the 100%SC Mass Hysteria(the little reapers die as soon as they spawn and you cant use your movement mode in the reaper form).

So a look and some changes to Mental SC's would be more than welcome

Question - for the additional 5% chance to crit and 25% crit damage for all super powers, can you have WM unlocked? It specifically says you cant for Light but is silent as to the others.

I'd assume it's the same for any might based AM but we'll see.

Not true at all. Clipping is the key to res.

Meant to say this as a reply...

Question - for the additional 5% chance to crit and 25% crit damage for all super powers, can you have WM unlocked? It specifically says you cant for Light but is silent as to the others.

I Don't think light gets a 25% crit damage or extra 5% either.

the extra 5% crit damage is only if you have a melee weapon and no WM unlocked. The standard crit damage on melee weapons with no WM is 15% crit weapon damage, +5% makes it to 20% (same as having a WM weapon in hand), Light AM does not get the extra 5% crit chance for some reason. All the change does for Light, is to make you not need to spec into WM.

With the new changes, might based AMs get 25% crit damage regardless of weapon and an extra 5% chance to crit. I'm more curious on to why Might based AMs get an extra 5% crit damage and an extra 5% chance to crit over Light's AM. Ice(on test), Gadgets, Electricity and Nature AMs were already hitting harder than Light and Light on test. It would be nice if Light can get the same benefit from using their AM.

Sorry to go off about Light, but I'm baffled on why this recent change singled Light out when it's not even close to the best performing AM.

Another questions for you all - how do you plan to mod for mental - all Might? Prec/Might? I am thinking Prec/Might so that I can have a viable build for both WM and AM via armories. Thoughts?

I think this is incorrect. The recent test update notes state that light does get %5 weapon crit damage bonus while you have the AM active

No matter if you are clipping, you will be interrupted the same way and in a group with more than one DPS sometimes the Adds will be dead before you reach your Res level 3.

It would be nice to get some clarification on this. If I have WM unlocked for Gadgets, I'm not seeing much difference between Live and Test. To test this, I used a Sticky Bomb, Gauss Grenade, Cryo-Foam, EMP Pulse loadout. I had WM unlocked, but only used powers. I ran the same tests on Live and Test.

Test Graph:


Live Graph:


I was interested in looking at crit chance here. 29% on Test versus 29.4% on Live for the same test.



If the 25% crit magnitude was working properly, I would expect to see some significant difference between my top-hitting EMPs on Live and Test.

Test:


Live:


The top-hitting EMPs are closer than what I'd expect.

Yeah it looks closer to a 10% diff based on these numbers.

I did a alert and a raid perfectly fine with it. Alert no tank and raid tank. I topped both as well with little problem. Im not understanding your problem with it. But any rate if you choose not to use something thats better thats ur choice.

OK I played extensively on test with my mental toon and here are my notes:

1.) Mass Lev does not do extra damage (or at the very least very minimal) with resonance amplified 1 time.
I tested by casting Mass Lev 1st to get Dazed, then resonance then TK Push, then Mas Lev again with
no WM or anything, just one right after the other. The results were pretty poor. . .although you can keep
resonance running, TK push always out does Mass Lev in terms of damage in this case, which cannot be right.

Doing a 2nd test, with the same thing, but doing Mass Lev -> Resonance -> (TK Push -> TK Bolt -> Mass Lev)*
(*repeat), Mass Lev started suddenly hitting much harder. So it appears you have to amplify at least 2 times.

Now the other thing to note with this is that Resonance says it can be amplified up to 3 times, but you cannot
do that from within the TK tree alone b/c both TK Push and TK Bolt can only be used once per resonance amplification
cycle.

So. . . I definitely think the dmg needs to be higher from Mass Lev with 1st resonance amp. . . otherwise it
requires 2 amps to even make it come close to the same crit damage you'd get with it from WM.

2.) We shouldn't have TK Push and TK Bolt (terrible name now), right after one another in the tree. . .it just makes no darn sense.

3.) My recomendation for the TK tree is as follows:
A.) Continue honing Mass Lev dmg with resonance amp
B.) Change the name of TK Bolt to TK Burst, have it work just like TK Bolt / Quantams Alcubierre Wave, but allow it still to break
encasements, and remove TK push (which will be replaced below). Have it swap places with Though Bubble and have it APPLY
and USE Dazed PI. Perhaps, allow it to keep doing resonance amplification. . .not sure.
C.) TK Push becomes TK Drag. Animation similiar to Low Pressure. . .it's a pull AoE, higher dmg with resonance and Dazed.
Mental desperately has needed a pull power since the begining. It still amplifies resonance.
D.) Thought Bubble is now in the middle where TK Bolt was. .. maybe it should do more damage on Dazed, but since Pyro
is better now, I'm fine with it not
E.) Cryokinesis still does what it does, but also amplifies resonance and hits harder (as in does double dmg ) with Dazed or resonance
F.) Pyro is great now. . .leave it
G.) TK is fine
H). Change TK shield to be a group +4 shield, that also reflects some dmg in dmg role or reflects some dmg and gives back some power
in troller role, and it also should amplify resonance. A 50% bottom tier shield needs to be more worthy, period.


4.) My Recommendation for the Illusion tree is a follows:
A.) Change back Mass Terror, no WM, no interaction with resonance, leave the DoTs at range. People like it . . leave it alone
Plus the way it is not, it's basically an illusion clone of Mass Lev. . .it's bad, change it back.
B.) Horrific Visage needs a DoT and should hit harder with resonance or Terrorize and amplify resonance.
C.) Now that Menace is a 3rd Tier power it makes it much less viable / worthy.
Make it useable while controlled, and additionaly
reduces incoming dmg by 15% and increases control resistance by 20% (just to you)
D.) Remove Reflect Pain, it's useless and Menace, and TK Shield cover those features.
E.) Granduer should amplify resonance
F.) Have Terrorize both apply and use Terror PI for extra damage, and it resets resonance amplification and does more damage
(like Mass Lev) with amplified resonance.
G.) Add a pet to Mental (say Ghost), that's basically a single version of Mass Hysteria, to replace Reflect Pain
H.) Reduce Psychic Shock's cool down (it's way to long right now)

Bottom line is the resonance changes are great, but still need a bit of work. . .but the things that have plagued mental for a long time are not resolved (useless shields to far in the tree, no pull, 2 powers doing almost exactly the same thing).

btw I meant to say group +3

I did some more testing, there is some damage increase in the AM due to the recent changes. I tested 4 rotations:

a) AM with Pyro
b) AM with Mass Hysteria
c) WM with Pyro
d) WM with Mass Hysteria

a)




b)






c)




d)




I was pretty confident even before I parsed the logs that the clear winner will be WM + Mass Hysteria for a simple fact that WM allows me to use Pyro alongside Mass Hysteria on the power bar, something which you cannot do with the AM. The 5 power slots requirement for running the AM kills its use and effectiveness and I cannot fathom why the Mental community keeps sleeping about this issue. Sure changing your loadout mid raid or using armories will maximize the damage, but that is a crappy solution imo. The AM should work with 4 power slots, nothing more. That way we can have Pyro and a SC on the loadout. Right now its too limiting.

What I find interesting is how ineffective is MH in a AM rotation. It provides zero benefits over Pyro, in fact, using MH in AM situation will net you a loss in dmg over the course of a raid. Sure the results are almost neck and neck, but dont forget that when MH is on CD your damage will go down, while you can run Pyro all the time. From the moment you activate MH and by the time its over, your SC bar is at 30%, so if it takes 1 minute to fill ~30% SC, it means you'll be without MH for another ~2 minutes. So much for the SC regen benefits for Mental.
Until the SC's are changed as many have already said, we gain nothing.