Dev Discussion GU74: Water Powers

i found solace, riptide, bubble, tempest, the 4man, and 8 man heal load out worked great with all different options for whatever is going down

Yeah, like I said, it appears to me that even though both Aqualance and Shark have a delayed time before the hit, they both end up in the same time frame. So the only difference would be that Aqualance benefits from Crushed and Shark doesn't. I don't know if the devs take that into account when calculating base damage or something, but you'd think that it would kind of negate the purpose, lol.

Have you noticed in your parses if they hit at the same time? I'm not sure exactly how to find out the total cast time in a parser, lol. Maybe I should get a stopwatch. Either way it's weird that all these powers with no CC or anything are hitting for only slightly more than all the knockdown, stun, pull moves.

The nice thing with water is all its moves are AoE and burst. So if they do it right, it definitely has the potential to be strong dps in raid situations. I wish there was another melee dps ability (has anyone noticed that water's powerset is a lot smaller than most other powers? Only 24 total abilities, although maybe that has to do with the high-tide mechanic extras), since at the moment everything that's DPS-only is ranged.

Coming from electricity to water, the gap in damage and effort is pretty big. Theres all these limitations on water while elec can do easier and stronger damage with more range. A few things I noticed after testing:

1.) Shark and waterspout cost the same power, but shark without high tide hits harder than waterspout with its pi bonus (making waterspout useless).
2.) Drown being the only ranged crushing move barely does any damage. There are better options for a supercharge generator. Electricity has multiple ranged pi casting moves that hit hard.
3.) High tide + shark is not giving me that big crit in the description and is outclassed by aqualance.
4.) Why do the moves that cost 200 power hit harder than depth charge, 300 power? (Makes depth charge useless)
5.) It only takes 2 tsunami strike combos to reset high tide, but it takes more than 2 combos for aquatic arsenal which is a melee (what happened to risk and reward?).
5b.) Aquatic arsenal doesn't do the damage of a melee power and is outclassed by tsunami strikes (making it useless).
6.) High Tide ends too quickly.
7.) There is a lack of DOTs (waterspout should be one, I mean it is a whirlpool).
8.) 3 moves (waterspout, aquatic arsenal, depth charge) are practically useless because of the better options.

Agree with all of this. Depth charge needs a buff imo. Not a huge 1, only slight. Its a 300 ability but seems to hit like a 200. Im using both combos atm (tsunami and ebb) and yea the dmg doesmt match the effort. I compare to say atomic where im doing 2 combos, sometimes 3, and it does much better damage. Sharks needs a fix because w/out HT it seems a bit weak but even with HT it doesnt hit hard enough sometimes and doesnt always crit.

I like spout as an ability, the way it looks but it also seems weak. My guess is it does less dmg because of the CC. If u wanna do pftt with water right now imo at least 4 abilities are a must. Drown, HT, lance and tsunami. Leaving only 2 spots. And imo bubble is needed so u are left with 1 spot and the option of shark, spouts, and depth charge. Im of course talking about ranged, not melee. But its only the 2nd day. Maybe some tweaks will happen.

Btw the description for bubble in damage role is extremely vague. A "chance at extra damage"? Im not sure how we finally get more stats under our stat tab like the crit stuff but then get abilities like this that give no info at all. The description cant say its a 5% buff or give the chance % for the extra damage? Is it giving a buff for the entire duration the shield is up or buffing the next ability? I hope a dev can answer this.

the bubble seems to give three tics in the 1k to 4k range when performing other attacks it will do no damage if you just stand there is kind of like how the sorc weapon buff used to be

Your loadout is similar to mine. Try clipping ebb. It works real well for me, since its the only clippable combo and it does more damage than the other 200s. I clip ebb with tsunami strikes.

Oh i am clipping it. Ty for the advice tho.

Np. I think a lot of people sleep on ebb and its one of the best moves.

I believe Shark Frenzy is bugged - that it is not critting w/ high tide as intended. Here's what I did: respec'ed to remove all my crit attack chance & crit attack damage (leaving only 6% chance). But even with only that, isn't SF supposed to crit for every attack when you're in High Tide? I tested 10x against a sparring target, hitting 1 crit. Damage with HT was almost identical as without HT (except for the 1 crit). I tried another 10 attacks with HT, got 3 more crits. Damage for the 7 non-crits was still about same as with HT active.

When I say damage was almost the same - avg for 16 non-crit hits while HT was active was 11.6 points of damage higher than without HT active; not exactly critical damage.

2 - Drown is a DoT but they should increase the DoT damage by at least 10% more.
3 - On test I think I said the same thing that Shark doesn't hit as hard as the lance move and lance is a burst/dot.
4 - Said the same thing that Depth Charge could use a buff.
6 - never thought about this and not sure how long it last but once it activated you have to eventually use your shark or lance instead of waiting.
7 - I said the same exact thing. Drown and Lance are the only DoT Water has making it mainly a burst Power. Healer Powers usually have great DoTs (Electric/Nature/Sorcery - Not sure about CL). I wanted the Jellyfish move to be a DoT in damage role. Many others requested this and it got ignored. In Damage role, it should land underneath the enemy you're locked onto.

When are they putting in a fix for shark frenzy not critting? Everyone I have talked to has stated that it doesn't always crit

I'm sure it'll be hotfix. I mentioned it not always critting on test server before too.

I cast bubble and stand on top of the dummies and it does no dmg. I was under the impression it was doing a buff. Thats how the description reads and what ive been seeing when i use some abilities with and then w/out it.

cast bubble and just tap your weapon a few times and you will see the might tics proc

It (Bubble's damage) is a bit of an odd thing. It seems to provide more hits with some abilities than others. With Crashing Wave Bubble gives me 2 hits. With Drown 1 hit. With Ebb & Flow 2 hits. With Depth Charge 3. With Aquatic Arsenal 3. (Haven't tested with everything yet). All hits are almost identical damage, whether 1, 2 or 3 hits. So oddly inconsistent (to me).

I believe the tsunami combos don't hit as hard as atomics due to having both a heal effect and a cooldowns reducer. Perhaps in the give and take portion the devs reduced the damage
I've heard on test tsunami strikes didn't heal in heal stance at first. But really it seems like no matter what type of loadout you use it parses similar...this sounds good at first till you realize no effort does same as effort and melee doesn't get you risk vs reward damage.

I´m just gonna state again some changes that can improve this new powerset, which is not bad at all, but it needs some adjustments IMHO:

- Change the High Tide interaction of Aqualance in healer role: This is a burst damage move that leaves a DoT if HT is up, so my suggestion is that instead of leaving a DoT in the enemies make a change to leave a group HoT while in healer role, keeping the first part of the power a damage ability. This will give us an aditional "hybrid" ability to play with if we chose to Battle Heal.

- Ebb and Flow: the damage can be raise a little bit IMO, especially the second part of the combo because it really needs a lot of timing and practice to get use to it.

- Make Tsunami Strikes clipable faster. Right now, you need to let almost the whole animation run before the damage is registered, which feels really weird coming form a player who loves the combo powersets and their cliping potential.

- Swap the High Tide interactions of Tempest Guard and Blessing of the Depths. This is based on my testing while healing, when the shield is up there is enough time to raise the health bars of your team mates, so the aditional effect of TG is pretty much wasted, it can be more useful to have a HoT after the Shield expires than a burst heal IMO; while BoD can use that second burst effect if HT is up for those OMG moments when u need to burst heal several team members.

- Aquatic Arsenal: this power needs a serious buff, it feels really weak for being a melee attack. Maybe raise the damage value of the initial cast and the last animation (the mace one) to make it more worth it.

- Deep Charge: underwhelming ability that needs a buff to even consider it a viable choice. Raise the base damage value plz.

I can't agree more. To be flat out the powerset is under preforming in the dps department.
As Ala said and i will tag on to it.

Ebb and Flow's Damage out put needs to be increased a tad bitm its a slow power please account for that time equals damage loss.

Aquatic Arsenal: I'm not sure what to say about this power, I don't understand it's place. A melee power that doesn't do melee damage.

"- Change the High Tide interaction of Aqualance in healer role: This is a burst damage move that leaves a DoT if HT is up, so my suggestion is that instead of leaving a DoT in the enemies make a change to leave a group HoT while in healer role, keeping the first part of the power a damage ability. This will give us an aditional "hybrid" ability to play with if we chose to Battle Heal. Ala"
This is a rather impressive idea and brings uniqueness to the power set.


Tsunami Strikes
Before The nerf the damage was ok didn't feel overpowered I understand it created one playstyle but if nothing was put in place to keep it inline with the other powersets then this shouldn't have been touched in the first place.



This is a very fun power set but players are already catching on to how weak it is compared to other power sets, I know a lot of work was put into it and i hope these issues are addressed quickly as players are very unhappy.

i don't get how everyone keeps saying it's a weak power set when I beat everyone I play against with it. I know skill before power but it is on par with everything I have run against so what if it doesn't pars the same on a target