Test Discussion GU 58: Munitions Mid-range Adjustments

splosion hits harder in midrange.. roket Launcher dose not do fire burn (DOT) idk if u change it or is it bugged .. i belive u have to buff splosion seems complete waste and perhaps a small buff for roket Launcher... from my test rail gun t roket t mini gun are the most effective power but i want t see splosion fit in .. if i do only those 3 i fill like im playin ice or fire i want to see big explosions fits in .. (50cal or splosion)

Exactly. As much as I'd enjoy splosion hitting harder, its a melee range power that can be clipped by KI. Theres no way to buff it and then hit both the midrange and melee targets. If they buff, would be too good in melee range unless they reduce the other AM powers which results in missing the midrange target.

Let me get this straight, because splosion can be clipped, it's okay for it to do lackluster damage for such a high risk power? Yeah, i'm sorry, but no. It being clippable is not cause for it to hit so low. There are many other powers in this game that can be clipped and hit harder af. Most of ice powers can be clipped, allowing you to go straight into artic gust. Should artic gust be nerfed because there are powers in ice that allow it to be used more often that usual because they can be clipped? No.

Also i didn't understand your last part about mid range, splosion isn't a mid ranged power. It's meant for melee, in fact munitions is meant for melee if you want to do the most damage with it. I don't know why a person would switch to munitions to play ranged or mid-ranged. Munitions isn't meant for that, you're better off playing sorc or some other ranged power.

Stuff like this gets on my nerves, seriously. People who know hardly anything about munitions dps, giving their 2 cents on it, and pretty much feeding the devs bad advice and ruining my favourite power.

What the guy is basically saying is, if splosion got buffed, it's mid range damage would be good. Leading to it's melee range being too good/op because the powers will be doing more damage at melee than at range. His concern would make sense, if splosion was actually a mid ranged power but it isn't. It's close ranged. And all the devs would literally have to do with splosion if that was the case was to cap the damage to a fix amount and another cap for when buffs. come into the mix, such as supply drops, trinkets,etc. So it wouldn't be op.

Was there a point to this, or just joking about my sig for some reason? I didn't follow you on this one.

Again. I'm atomic. When I melee I hit for 20-30k. I still top charts daily. I am accused of hacking whenever I battle tank a pug... which only crits up to like 15k btw.

You guys are focusing on single, solitary numbers, and not the average damage... aka Damage Per Second. People are forgetting about time. If you want a 40k base hit, then you're going to have to slow down the entire rotation or add a charge bar to Splosion.

If Splosion parses werent hitting the melee goal, Id say you'd have an argument. But the goal is not to make individual powers shine. The goal is to make each AM have (mostly) even benchamrks in all ranges. Currently, Munie is damn close to that, without making Splosion OP af. If you want to adjust Splosion, you'd have to adjust everything else around it. I personally don't want Munie to be focused around Splosion or ANY single (i.e. mandatory) ability, because then it'd feel like every 1234 power out there... and they're so boring! Why on earth do people want more of the same? What is wrong with being able to mix and match whatever powers you want? Munie is like the ONLY power that can afford to do that! And before you go "We're not asking for more of the same", you absolutely are. It's math. You can't change how it works.

Munie is not special.

Munie is not a melee power. ALL powers do better up close, or at least soon they all will. SPLOSION IS HARDLY EVEN A "MELEE" ABILITY (Pretty generous range, yes?). You have no reason to compare this to the melee abilities of Rage and HL. It's an absolute joke that you people think that there is a modicum of risk involving this ability. It's your HIGHEST dps ability and offers the LEAST risk of being interrupted, and you want it buffed even more than they did? LOL.

Munie is sustained dps, and mobile at that. That is its identity. It is not meant for big booms, other than Splosion.


You know what though. Give them Splosion how they want it, show them how broken it is, and nerf it into oblivion on Live again. We can then literally have the same argument for a 3rd time.

EDIT:


Get a set of scales.

SCENARIO 1:
Put 35g on one side. Let that represent 35k DPS... which is the goal for Tunso testing melee DPS.
Put 35g on the other (split it up between 3-4 smaller weights). Let that represent Munie's current melee dps on Test: 35k dps.
The scales are at an even height. We call this "balance".

SCENARIO 2:
Now take one of those weights on the Munie side (let's say it was 12g), and replace it with a weight that is 24g or, gulp, 36g.

Look at your scales now. Are they balanced? If not, this conversation is over.

Your Sig. Lol

Always! lolol. Sad thing is I only play the one char, I'm just a style ***** lolol

Is the math really so confusing? The most Splosion can ever account for in a rotation is the 5.5k dps difference between the mid and melee ranges. If accounts for more than that then you can either be balanced at mid-range and overpowered at melee, or you can be balanced at melee range and underpowered at midrange. It's impossible to be balanced at both if Splosion accounts for more than 5.5k dps at melee range, ( barring some weird scalar that reduces other AM powers down when the range is < 7 meters ).

If you look at Harlequins testing numbers from two pages ago, you'll see both melee rotations have Splosion hitting for right around 5.5k +/- 10% dps. It's currently working exactly as is should.

You hit the nail on the head. The DCUO community has been defeated by the prospect of dividing damage by time.

And these people vote. Good lord.

Hmm. Since the same multi-national corps. Own both parties I fail to see your point.

My man with the Alley McBeal. Wow. Wow. Aces.

Like i've said before what it says on paper and how it actually performs are two different things. So what you tested it against sparring targets, great. Now lets go in a raid situation with ice, sorc, mental and even atomic dps. Lets see how that "sustained dps" holds up with a very weak splosion, when those heavy hitting powers are also doing damage, the sustained damage won't be enough, just like it is on live. You can't always rely on biggun for dps. You'll need a heavy hitter, splosion is fast but doesn't hit hard enough, like i said before i'm not asking for 100k hits here.

Munitions is best played at melee range, so splosion has to be a staple in it, munitions doesn't have to centered around splosion but it has to be very viable/competitive with it. And lets be honest here munitions is already a 1,2,3,4 power, only difference it has between other 1,2,3,4 powers is that you get to mix and match the 1,2,3,4 powers you use. They aren't fixed powers that you have to use,so i don't see your point.

And you say that it would be broken if it was implemented. I remember splosion being exactly like this before and where were the complaints? There weren't any! I didn't see any splosion nerf thread, munition nerf threads, i saw lots of ice and mental nerf threads and the occasional biggun threads but never splosion threads. And you even said your self that splosion was nerfed because of pvp not pve, so i don't see how it'd be broken, based on the past.

I've grown seriously bored of this conversation at this point, this is the last post i'm making on this thread. Lets just see what happens when this hits live and it performs against over powers. By then one of us will be eating crow. And apologies if i came off as hostile during this entire thread.

Here are my testing parses after the recent fixes.

Live Test:

Power = Munitions
CR = 126
Might = 10426 (with Escalating Might)
Enemies = the 3 Sparring Dummies (League Hall)
Time = 300 seconds (30 samples of 10 second parses)
Damage goals = 35500 / 30000 / 25500 : melee / mid-range / long-range

Melee
Rotation:

1. 'Splosion clipped by KI
2. Railguns > Rocket Launcher > 50 Cal > 'Splosion (rinse and repeat) (perform #1 when KI off cooldown)

Melee average: 37,082.6




Mid range
Rotation: KI > Railguns > Rocket Launcher > 50 Cal > rinse and repeat (refresh KI when off cooldown)
Mid range average: 31,549.2




Range
Rotation: KI > Railguns > Rocket Launcher > 50 Cal > rinse and repeat (refresh KI when off cooldown)
Range average: 25,992.1




Comments:
Munitions is finally parsing at normal averages and seems to work as intended. I am by no means a munitions expert but I noticed during my many parses that my best melee rotation involved using both 50 Cal and 'Splosion. My best midrange and range parses used 50 Cal as well. Not sure why but it was interesting to note. I really like the many options Munitions offers and I enjoy the flexibility of the loadout. In one spec you can get three channels, 'Splosion, Killer Instincts, Survival (for pickups/detaunt), Big Gun (Offensive SC), and the APS Shielding (Defensive SC).

I also want to point out that in my melee rotation; when it came down to refreshing KI.....I activated it always after my 50 Cal channel so I went Rail Guns > Rocket Launcher > 50 Cal > 'Splosion clipped by KI (in one animation).

In my range rotation, when KI was off cooldown, I activated it after my 50 Cal Channel was over so I went Rail Guns > Rocket Launcher > 50 Cal > KI.

I noticed there's a DPS loss when you activate KI in between your channels. Where is most of your damage coming from? Your channels. So the buff can wait after the three channels are over. If anyone can further test what I am trying to say then that would be great. But again I have no experience with Munitions but these are my thoughts after parsing for a bit with it.

Atomic combo dps IS sustained dps. I preach sustained dps on the daily, because I do it and it works. Sustained damage is what kills hard bosses. Sustained dps suffers on trash, but excels on bosses WHERE IT MATTERS. But you want to cheese your dmg and chase scorecards on trash mobs? You wish you had a big boom for that? It's called Biggun.

What difference is there between ice and munitions? Forget the numbers, that's what they're working on on test. They both have channeled, smooth, sustained attacks that they can keep going between fights. the difference is with munie you press 3-4 buttons instead of 1. Think of the Grodd fight in PBE, especially the elite. That fight was DESIGNED for munie/ice/fire... because THEY'RE ALL MOBILE DPS AND THAT IS WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO EXCEL. Mental, gadgets, quantum, celest, rage, HL, atomic 1234 users all WISH they could do what Munie/fire/ice can do in that fight. Howmuch damage do you think quantum users get when gross jumps out of their time bomb every 3 seconds?

And there WERE complaints about Splosion, namely in PvP which.. I guess you haven't realized is undergoing a bit of a rennaissance lately. I don't think they would care to make the same mistake again. Maybe you do, but you're alone compadre. I'm sick ofd the one shots that already exist on Live, I'm not looking to add more.

I really think you should read through this post a few times. I don't mean to be condescending, but you really just are so focused on Splosion, you are forgetting about the rest of the powerset. You mention that "Splosion was boss when it first came out", which meant increased dps. So you want splosion back to where it was... but you're just not understanding that they did more buffing to the OTHER parts of the equation to normalize DPS, and that it's not just all falling on to Splosion.

And let me make it even simpler:

For the munie side (35g = 35k dps).... Let's say you're using Rails (10g = 10k dps), SGL (11g = 11k dps), and Splosion (14g = 14k dps). These numbers are purely for demonstration of course.

If you want Splosion to now be 28k dps you have 10g + 11g + 28g = 49g or 49k dps.

That's a bit high. So how to balance it if we want a big splosion? Well, obviously we'd have to make the other guys smaller.

Wait a second... 2-3 really weak attacks ending with one big attack? Sounds like a couple AMs I know and hate.

Munie is supposed to be a sustained, mobile dps. Yes it does better in melee, asa do most powers, but munie (along with ice and fire) are better equipped than ANYONE to achieve "safe" meleeing due to the mobility afforded by the AM. I don't want to turn it into a 1234 burst power. There are enough of those, and they're killing the identity of what this game used to be. I don't appreciate anyone trying to make this game even MORE generic.

This thread is a great example of why math is scary for most people, especially division. Munitions seems to be in order as far as max DPS capabilities with the recent changes.