Test Discussion GU103: Source Shard Artifact

Agree with Illumin411. This to me (SS stated previously) feels like a very weird artifact. It has both might and prec so it for both play styles. However, and this is important:

Might dps: they need as many slots available for actual rotations. So it makes might rotations clunky since it makes it so they have even less slots available. Let’s take ice for an example.
Ice can run both snow devil and robot sidekick. This gives them the most up time for the god wave to be effective. But add the god wave for a 3rd slot and a sc for a 4th slot. This gives them only 2 slots left for a rotation. So it would be frost blast and spam snow ball.

Or let’s go with an actual pet power like earth.
You have crystal, god wave and you’d have to use fortify. Plus a sc. that means you still only have 2 slots left. So it would be jackhammer and a spamable ability.

Now you could give up on a sc but generally they offer great benefit and play styles that aren’t so restricting will generally out perform them.

You could go with a none pet power.
RSK and god wave plus a sc means they have 3 slots up. However they can’t make as much benefit since they will rely on having wait for their pet trinkets to be up to reach max damage. So this is forcing a play style on powers that aren’t typically pet powers. While those that do already have a class pet get stuck with note awkward rotations.

Now onto prec dps. Generally prec dps have more freedom then might dps to use this artifact.
Prec will have RSK, weapon buff, and a SC plus the god wave. Then they can add two 3 second cooldown powers and rotate them after each explosive shot. Or have a 6second cooldown ability for doom spin. So this play style favors prec dps more. However the prec stat is very low and only abilities reset the godwave cooldown. Out this artifact at an inbetween limbo state. Now, I don’t agree that they should make it to have weapon attacks reset the cooldown.


I think instead how this could be remedied would be to turn god wave to a 6 second cooldown and remove the “may reset godwave” part of the artifact. Instead change it to “abilities have a chance to reduce cooldown of pet trinkets”. This way it doesn’t affect prec to much since they have to wait to use it after a weapon attack anyways to recast it while also make it fit more into might rotations. A 6 second cooldown would be easier to fit into might rotations than a 18 second cooldown ability that has a chance of being 0.

Any power that alters its optimal rotation in any significant way to incorporate Godwave Strength will suffer greatly. Source Shard is best when used to augment a rotation, as most of the best rotations can fit it into the bar w/o giving much or anything up. We effectively just do our best rotations like we normally would, then adapt slightly. There's basically three types of effective Godwave substitutions:

1. Direct substitution, always replacing a specific power in a rotation at a specific time, regardless of CD proc (Gadgets is a good example of this)
2. Intermittent Substitution: Substituting Godwave Strength in for the weaker, fast cast power in a left-right-left rotation when CD procs (most powers are either like this or have to adapt this approach to use Source Shard)
3. No change to rotation at all, simply popping Godwave Strength when available (so far the only power I've seen this work on is Fire because of the cast times making the buff duration timing work out perfectly, but the same could arguably be done with combo rotations that couldn't normally run it, like on Light).

There seems to be a misconception that we'll maximize our DPS by spamming tf out of powers, then subsequently spamming Godwave Strength. That approach nets a significant DPS loss over just doing a properly optimized rotation then augmenting it with Godwave Strength. Example of the first type of Source Shard augmentation I described:

Gadgets ST at Short/Max Range with Solar, Grim, Source Shard:

Note: No non-Cryo-foam ranged variant for Source Shard build because ranged tap (clipped with)>Godwave Strength (clipped with)>Stealth doesn't reliably proc Stealth's damage the way tap>P Dart>Stealth can

Gadgets ST at Short/Max Range with Solar, Grim, Tetra:

As is, it's on par with Trans (not including once stat/dmg buffs hit the equation). If we summon combat pet, then after it expires summon henchmen, then repeat when able, Godwave builds gain ~2k or more damage than non-Godwave builds doing the same thing, putting Source Shard pretty much on par with what we're seeing here with Tetra (but it then requires some smart play after we factor in stat/dmg buff stacking, since pets don't benefit from those things). We get the same results if we look at type 2 or type 3 rotations, but with some type 2 rotations actually gaining with Godwave. It's also important to note that a low SP player will likely do better with the Godwave variants because pets are CR-based damage, not stat-based.

This is ultimately why this can work just as well for Prec as it does for Might. We don't get the most out of this by spamming mindlessly, and even if we do the 10% proc chance still means that, on average, we often end up only using Godwave Strength either in conjuction with or instead of whatever power we ought to have in the first place and anything other than that is a straight-up gamble or outright loss.

It just augments existing playstyles and while it will never achieve the same raw max DPS potential, it makes up for it in consistency in that in mechanics heavy elite fights where your rotation is constantly interrupted (eg. Lady Blackhawk), the extra damage coming from your pets closes that gap. It's a damn near perfect artifact in its current state, just quirky and a tad situational if someone's trying to min:max.

So u just completely disregarded me sayin dps in general and again said its about me smh. What if a combo might power wants to run this artifact let's say celestial or HL or earth or atomic or water all might based, my suggestion was a certain hit counter like 15 or 20+ hits granting the 10% chance of reset. Like again u continue to see wat u want to see talking about only prec when I'm referring to dps in general And I never said anything about making it clippable either, batuba already stated hes working on a way to make it more free flowing. They have already made artifacts that r both might n prec balanced as I stated earlier with EoG, strat/trans card, grim which all builds benefit from whether being prec might or combo based, so it only made sense to do the same for shard since using pets can be either prec or might

Dont know if u mentioned it already but do u kno if u can put godwave in stealth??

Idk bout 6 secs thas a bit to low but I can see 12 secs and even then having to stop to feed pet then use godwave then go into rotation that's alot of lost damage

You can, but it removes Stealth without proccing the bonus damage and doesn't clip with anything else useful so the best usage is the one depicted above. I go into a lot more detail here but that's the jist of it. You can pop it over Taser Pull if it's off CD w/o Stealth, but it's generally a long-term loss as it's guaranteed it won't proc reset every time to be ready for Stealth again, so instead of a fairly reliable "free" Godwave every 12s we'd get some short-term bursts and a big RNG gamble that, from our testing, resulting in an ~5-10% DPS loss for this type of substitution.

Personally, since there's room for it I do keep it in there passably alongside Turret and SC just to observe it's status but, long story short, we don't recommend actually popping it from the Stealth bar ever, as you lose out on a big chunk of damage.

That’s the reason it would have to be 6 seconds if the effect last 5-6 seconds. This artifact would seem strong on paper if the change was made. However it would fall in line during actual game play. In an actual raids (especially elite) pets have to deal with bad AI, power issues, and even dying and having to be respawned. Pets also can not get boosted by buff colas, omegas, trinkets, group buffs, or even supply drop buffs since their damage is based on cr. This means that the damage output they do is capped at a certain point while none pet play styles can have that cap raised. Having it set at 6 seconds means the rotations flow more. For example.
Sorcery:
Having fury, god wave, offering and a sc means you have 2 slots. You could add another two 3 second cooldown abilities. This would lead to the following rotation
Offering > x > y > god wave > x > y > repeat.

Or if you use a power that doesn’t have a class pet.
RSK, god wave, sc, 6 second cooldown ability, two 3 second cooldown abilities

God wave > x > y > 6 second > x > y > repeat.

Might rotations would be able to flow more without relying on spamming .5 or 1 second cooldown abilities and hoping that god wave gets reset.

I misunderstood thought u were referring to cooldown of godwave but yea from what I saw the crystal/fury only does 1 strong attack withinthowe 5secs the rest is small weapon attacks

Bug Report
I'm noticing a bug with the reset Proc on Godhand Wave. Here is an example:


At 6-7 seconds, the reset proc occurs while using Amplified Heat Vision. I then ignore casting Godhand Wave and instead use a Taser Pull->Stealth->Surprise Attack clip. When I come out of Stealth, Godhand Wave is back on cooldown.

I've seen this happen multiple times today.

Seems that Gadgets is the best power for such artifact in both Might and Precision based.

12 seconds would be marvelous but even with 18 seconds if Godwave was clippable that would improve a lot our playstyle.

Guess the only good news is, the devs don't make must have artifacts for any specific role every 4-6 months

Are you the Pc Mr Fixit that tarnished my villain's name during the server merge

No.

I only go by "Mr. Fixit" on PCTest due to perpetual bug hunt. I go by "Penryn" on USPC.

LOL okay. I thought I finally found the other Fixit.

Batuba, please allow combos to proc the reset of Godwave. Earth and HL will have to go out of their way to use this artifact

That's not true, especially now that Upheaval's combos can be immediately clipped without damage loss:




It's the exact same as with other right-left-right rotation powers (ie. Godwave activation replaces the insta-cast or lower dmg portion of the rotation when it's available). They get the exact same outcome with it as other powers, ie. once the DPS from the 3rd pet is factored in Source is close to Tetra/Trans, then lower output in raw tank & spanks because other buffs don't work on pets but slightly better output in chaotic fights where we're constantly interrupted or forced to dodge mechanics.

The only power that has any real "advantage" over others with Source Shard is Mental for long range situations, because Godwave Strength can be clipped with Invisibility (which is something Mental needed for >50% range). Can similarly be clipped with Stealth but Stealth could already be clipped onto P Dart so it's not as game-changing for Gadgets.

I don't know many people that use Upheaval...but even then it still should proc from combos.

Is this happening to you even if you have Godwave Strength on your Stealth bar as well? I've not been able to replicated this. I've spent a lot of time on Mental and Gadgets testing Source Shard but I've always kept in on both bars.