Hey DCUO, I thought of making a before patch discussion of the new upcoming "Midrange Balance" that has been posted here and the changes they are making to the powers that heavily use Midrange. (This Thread isn't made to nerf any power but to help the rest) Before getting into Earth, Electric, Nature and Sorcery we will have to talk about the powers who currently don't use the midrange unbalance mechanic which are out performing the powers that need this unbalance these powers are: Munitions Mental Gadgets Ice NOTE* These 4 powers in any order that the Players/Devs Choose which one is overpowered against the other doesn't matter, What matters is why they make it on top the majority of the time and whats the difference between the rest of the powers that aren't named on this list. Now why did I list these 4 powers over the rest? Because they have 1 thing in common, All 4 powers have High Burst damage and fast burst damage most of which are uninterrupted the majority of the time, and Munitions and Ice have supers that also back them up with insane burst damage. Why is it different from Celestial, Atomic, Fire, Rage, Hardlight, Quantum? Lets go 1 by 1 Celestial Its technically slower against the top 4 chaining combos more interruption vs the 4 even with grace period. Hardlight yes it hits hard but the second you get off the chain of combos to reapply pi or get a supply drop trinkets supercharge you drop a lot of damage so don't move combo all day and don't stop for nothing is your best choice. Atomic Needs A Grace Period. Rage Risk is too High, just way too High, People might say use Dreadful Blast, umm just not the same without outrage. Fire Fire burst is nice, but compare to arctic gust it isn't, that and Ice elemental, and the 5 seconds of building a Kamehameha ball isn't helping. Quantum Slow and burst isn't has good as it use too ever since Amazon Part 2 So now Earth/Sorcery, I know, I know some people will be asking well why aren't they up there with the top 4 I listed? Let me explain. Earth and Sorcery don't have burst AMs, their Ams are base off of Burst Over Time unlike Electric and Nature which only have Damage Over Time, the One-Handed Flip Slash works better on pet AMs then Dot AMs. What does this mean? It means the flip slash is the Burst damage needed for this 4 powers to keep up with the top 4 I mention, But because Electrics AM is broken and Natures dots are too low and don't have Burst Over Time Pets they fall behind. One-Handed Flip Slash The flip acts like a Mass Terror, EMP, Arctic Gust etc for precision base powers, only its slower it takes additional taps and you can say slightly less damage by a small amount.The thing is it isn't a power, so mental can option out a AM but won't do what it does with it. Concluding for now If earth and sorcery are pet powers why not increase their powers while the pets are active for example jackhammer, circe of destruction do additional damage while Crystal/Fury is active or while Fortify Golem/Offering is active, or increase their solo attack buffs enough to compare the burst AM powers. Now i know the CR to Skill point update will ruined the pets damage and Bricks/Watchers Support might have to only keep them at CR or Base them off stats as well by a percentage. As for Electric and Nature they need to increased dots and a burst they can depend on but since they're dot AMs i don't see a burst coming. Midrange Balance The balance is going to be interesting, especially for powers like Rage, TANKS will be mad and people will try to keep close, this is the current state of the game and what powers do against others, the burst game is majority of the dpsing compare to the powers who use midrange in the first place. Let me know what you guys think.
Munitions is hitting the intended DPS marks, same with ice. The only difference is the Super-charge factor. Whenever these two Powers use an SC, their damage gets boosted vastly. To be honest I'd rather have them buff all the other super-charges and make those viable again. Munitions and Ice aren't the only powersets gulity of having a Great Super-charge either. Sorcery is the king of having the best supercharge thanks to grand summoning. If Mid-range gets done without grand Summoning being touched, then prepare to see sorcery as the next fotm. Gadgets and Mental I can purely agree on as they've been noted to being bugged and thanks to some bugs they are over-parsing. Quantum also needs a grace period, I can't tell you how many times my DPS suffers because I can only put 2 time powers before TB explodes thanks to get interrupted. Rage and HL need to be factored in for 7M if possible, that seems to be the common request from the community on those two powersets. I don't see Fire being changed. Fireburst is mean't to be used on High Health targets, if your dealing with Low HP targets then it's better to use Flame Cascade. Celestial is slower, but it's the strongest performing combo based powerset atm. And at Long-range distance Celestial can kill all the other powersets due to how beefy it's AM is.
i left grand summoning behind, my fault, but the main reason earth and sorcery are keeping up is from the midrange and pets, eletric and nature doesnt have a power burst or pet burst which is why they fall behind.. All the powers alone on both earth and sorcery without the flip slash are too weak to help Crystal/Fury do enough damage. There is that and the CR Base factor that the pets are using, once they go back to Skill Points matter, the pets will under perform on the dps side and support side of the power. If DCUO just changes Midrange Damage Distance on Earth, Electric, Nature, Sorcery they basically did nothing to balance these powers vs the rest. What does that mean, Buff Jackhammer, Uphavel make a pet precision mechanic same with sorcery might base pet mechanic, Make it so that the Power themselves do something and not just the weapons, cause right now its just pets, buff and weapon. Give them a Unique Factor instead of the pets becuase 90k or less power parse vs just pet and flip slash is something to look at
On HL the parse says other wise retest it, If i stop to use trinkets etc and go back to the combo it does lose damage. Yes you can move but i rather not unless im on lightbalst and minigun
Flame Cascade is a full to mid range power, it has no melee scale. Fire burst could work without the vulnerability window since no other power currently shares the same damage penalty that fire does. On top of that Detonate could be added in as a shortcut damage ability - similar to how gadgets/mental has one.
You're talking about two completely different AMS. IF fire gets a shortcut like Mental and Gadgets, Mental and Gadgets would have to be mobile to compensate. Flame cascade may not have no melee Scale(I never said It did), but it's fast and instant damage.
Light and rage need a 7m melee option to be truly competitive in most content. It'd be nice, as light, to be able to pop a supercharge, a buff or a shield without losing the AM, since the optimal DPS powers can all pop a super and a buff and jump right back into the AM. But at this point, I'd honestly just take 7m melee.
Flame Cascade is a Full-range option, Mass Det is the Full/Mid-range option, and Fireburst is the Mid/Melee-range option. Burning Det already works as a shortcut since it activates Volatility and the power regen at once.
Long story short: With same sustained Dps, DOTs AM and Combos will always be at the bottom and 1234 and Pets will always be at the top.
Just give my Celestial dps a slight buff so i don't always have to heal and ill be happy. I love the power in smaller content but unless I'm with my league I get ignored in LFG trying to dps raids. I don't mind healing at all, it's gobs of fun, but it'd be nice (selfishly) to get picked up to dps top tier raids from time to time. I don't have to be on the Ice-Gadgets-Munitions-Mental level, just make it respectable so we get some LFG love once in awhile. This has nothing to do with the midrange discussion I guess but I thought if toss it out there. #Celestial4FotM #ComboPowersUnited #IHateHashtags
Next pass isn't going to change anything on the powers that already got their mid range, and the weapons pass comes with a system that will cancel AM as soon as you use a weapon attack. Yes hey are working a a way to make sure Rage tanks and pretty much support roles don't get affected much by it, but they wont make a new pass for powers that already got their AM, face it devs know what powers are harder to use not based on skill but simply on them making it harder with their fake risk/reward system because you never see the reward, but they wont change it, combo powers aren't meant to be stronger than burst powers, it's a fact.
Fire is still relatively slow due to setting up buffs and using FB which add up to about 5s before the AM damage even registers. If the player gets interruped the damage doesn't register at all. (shortcut and grace period fixed this problem for PI powers) Hence the need for a burst alternative. And no I'm not mixing anything up, I never stated that it's a PI power or gadgets/mental mobile powers. Don't put word in my mouth.
Make them respect you as a celestial dps. We ain't getting another look at for quite a while and all we really need are minor fixes. Its the small stuff screwing us over.. we were made for variety and flexibility.. we don't have that at all and the meta needs to change for us to really shine. WotPcCS shouldn't be our only move that's good to use with an occasional CScWotP or AcB. hell our AoE finisher (PcDL) is dainty. And DLcP is only useful in PvP DPS. the nerf to PcDL's range and the lack of foresight to extend the range of the glyph to 13m while bumping up the glyph damage to get a full 80% 100% of the time had really hurt. add on that our dots don't get any scalar even with midrange and the AM, that's another thing limiting variety as our might dots and prec dots need to play out for us to be at full potential. For now triple buff, CI or DL, WotPcCS and RcW is your best bet in all content.
^^^^^^^ This is exactly what I run 96.345% of the time. Sometimes I throw others in there dependant on the content, typically anything t6 and under or early t7. I agree fully with your post. If they would (but they won't) just add a stronger might tick or two here and there and/or gave us slightly stronger dots and/or gave us something in the midrange, I'd be completely satisfied. When running with my league I get to dps much more often because as a unit we are a well oiled machine and the lesser dps (burn) doesn't hold us back. Which I'm sure is the case with most quality leagues. But in the eyes of the community it's not a fast enough burn power to justify dragging into DWF or KCT for example. That mentality is a community issue, not a Celestial issue. But still, it'd be nice to wake up one day and be able to compete to help erase the stigma poor old Celestial has. I don't care in the least about scorecard position but if Celestial was on top more often I'd sleep better at night, lol. #ChristmasWishList #IKnowBetter #StillHateHashtags
The AM has been set in stone for Earth and Sorcery. .and I have a feeling that's exactly what's gonna happen. They said"Mid-range damage increase". They didn't say Powers themselves were getting revamped. Yes there was a request for an AfterShock AM, but that was over 2 years ago. It got ignored in favor of the Pet AM, and as of late there's been no request to really change Earth and Sorcery's AM. So I'd doubt anything will change outside of WM and a Damage Increase. Electric and Nature on the other hand can potentially change because there's been multiple requests for something to burst with in the AM.
In all fairness, Fireburst and TimeBomb should be buffed a little to compensate for the delayed damage and the "risk" of not registering damage at all. On top of that interrupted Fireburst wont give power back either. Fire is very power hungry both in dps and tank role, power costs are way higher compared to Ice. Hence why there are barely any Fire players left in end game. I dare say Fire is as rare as Electricity atm.
@VioletSorceress The reason why pets are some what keeping up is the "Burst Over Time" Damage compared to Nature and Electric, It wont keep up with a great gadget spamming emp or Munitions. @Jacob Dragonhunter Yes, I know they wont change the AM to a Aftershock AM for earth or a Might base AM for Sorcery, But I was asking for a pet am revamp, not eliminating the pets but while Fortify/Offering is Active make it so Earth/Sorcery powers are also hitting hard till it coolsdown or while Crystal/Fury are alive their powers are increased vs being the same 5k to 10k rumblecrush, 800 split on jackhammer. But if they do decide to do it, Im guessing it will be while Fortify Golem/Offering is active Jackhammer/Circle does additional damage while crystal/fury do their thing of course they will have to even the numbers out etc etc, But jackhammer will have to hit harder vs circle, cuase earth wont be able to back slash or use a weapon in that time frame.
IF Jackhammer becomes a thing, they need to Open up the Power-regeneration to Powers in the Sesimic tree. IMO since one handed takes roughly 4 taps and one hold, then I'd say 4 jackhammers should equal that of One Flip slash.
IF, It will mean Fortify Golem/Offering will be doing ALOT more then what its doing now, The jackhammer one-handed replacement is a great idea, since earth wont be using any weapons while its hammering but Sorcery will have to be different since its base off Dots/burst and will still be able to use the flip.
