So it looks to me that we have a slight issue here with power creep as more and more powers get added to test. 300 power cost burst abilities used to all hit around 25-34k critical damage give or take but somewhere in that area, but now powers sets that are being added later on their 300 power cost burst abilities are hitting 40-46k critical damage. The non crit damage of those powers is hitting just about as hard as the crits of the same power cost abilities from earlier versions of test and thats really throwing off balance. So why the change in damage? Why change the formula up and make newly added powers so much better then older ones? Heres some examples of what im talking about. These are just a few and im not singling certain powers out just posting some examples from things off the top of my head but this is the trend between older powers and a lot of newer powers. Older powers: Gadgets sticky bomb- 300 power cost- 27k crit 13kish non crit Elec- Electro burst 300 power cost- 34k crit, 17k non crit, E-bomb 300 power cost- 25k average Newer powers: Fire- Wildfire 300 power cost 44k crit 22k non crit (non crit damage is almost equal to crit damage of older 300's) Flash point 200 power cost 36k crit, 17k non crit (this is a bit more in line but still better then older powers) Something that also has me confused is Flash point is a melee ability and deal less damage then wildfire which can be used at max range. I would think a melee ability should deal more damage then a ranged ability....Munitions also has this issue, mini nuke has full range but hits harder then splosin which is a melee ability...whats up with this??? Celestial- Divine light- 44k crit Munitions: has multiple powers that hit ranges from 36-48k Thats just a few examples but its easy to see what im talking about. Electric was once considered a top power but now with more powers being added and this power creep happening electric is a 3rd tier power. Theres even as high as a 15kish dps discrepancy between elec and some powers and thats a crazy dps increase to have. ( that increase is over elec not elec is better then other powers by that much) To give you a idea of how much of a gap that is nature is roughly 15-18k behind most powers on live server and we all know how bad nature is. Another problem that will stem from some abilities hiting in the 45k range is now powers with slower setup times start to suffer cause other powers have such strong fast burst they kill things before others can get their stuff going. Thats the same issue we have with AM's on live server. Electric imo is the benchmark we should strive to balance powers around. It does great damage but not to much. We don't want to be doing crazy damage cause then content is just burnt though like on live server in 10 min and thats bad design. I don't know what the plan will be to fix this but either those harder hitting abilities need to be brought down or the older weaker abilities need to be brought up to par with the newer ones so things balance out cause right now the damage discrepancies are pretty big.
Be careful using Sticky Bomb as a measuring stick. Sticky Bomb's base damage value has been reduced significantly since the start of Revamp. What used to be a decent power now has the same base damage range as several other 200 cost powers. My personal opinion is that Sticky Bomb is Gadgets worst 300 base cost power right now. There have been several other powers that have been quietly buffed up and down without receiving proper hotfix patch notes. Given that, I think the proper way to measure "power creep" would be to calculate the non-crit base ranges for the high damaging powers and compare them that way. I only keep track of Gadgets base damage value ranges since getting accurate measurements is very time-intensive. EDIT: For comparison, here are the base damage value ranges for Gadgets 1.5 for 300 base cost powers: High Power Cost Battle Display: 33% Precision and 33% Weapon DPS Buff Cryo-Field: Seventeen ticks of 8-9 (Sometimes eighteen ticks) EMP Pulse (Controller): 88 to 97 EMP Pulse (Damage): 92 to 102 Holographic Decoy: No Data Sticky Bomb: 62-69 Surprise Attack: 122-135 Vortex Cannon (Controller): 73-81 Vortex Cannon (Damage): 82-92
To correct a mistake i made in the above post about flash point being a 300 power cost its only 200 just the tool tip on test says 300 but to further the power creep even some 200 power cost abilities do more damage then the older powers sets 300 power cost abilities and thats just plain messed up. Also to touch on the melee comment i made about it since flash point is only a 200 ability i guess its correct that it deals less damage then wildfire but at the same time i think a melee ability should so slightly more damage then your best ranged ability, not a bunch more but a bit. If flash point was left how it is its about on par with a few other melee abilities but would have to be made 300 cost and wildfire def needs to be brought down for things to line up right in the power vs damage and melee vs range formula.
Sticky is just about on par with e-bomb and some other 300's that i remember but it def has been taken down. As for base damages and testing i just always run the same spec when doing these tests its just a round about figure but it comes out the same in the end. With my stats wildfire hits about 22k average non crit with a crit 44kish. Its easy to see that the older 300 power costs abilities i've listed are lacking no matter what stats you have and as long as you keep the same stats for all the tests you will be fine. I'll have to go back over to see if any of the older 300 bursts have been ninja buffed but i don't think they got better but maybe brought up to par cause i regularly go back and test things for comparison and haven't noticed are significant difference in dps overall with older powers except mental last time i checked, but i'll take your work for it and check it out. If i needed to get into the nity grity i might do base testing like that but my comparisons are all fine and accurate cause my stats never change. Its just to show the general differences and you can clearly see them I listed some of the non crit but to figure out a non crit its roughly half the damage of a crit but im sure you know that and im just speaking generally give or take a few. I just didn't want to write a giant wall of text and i figured the devs would under stand what im talking about. Had to edit that like 3 times cause i was using my phone haha
As a reference, the base damage value range for Sticky Bomb was 80-88 on February 9th. That version had no cooldown and also included the damage division bug. As of 1.5, Sticky Bomb's range was measured at 62-69. The current version has a 3 second cooldown and does proper damage division. So yeah, it has been hit pretty hard by the on-going adjustments. Vortex Cannon is complicated. It had the same damage range as Sticky Bomb on Feburary 9th. In Revamp 1.5, its base damage value was changed so it is affected by the player's current role. The 1.5 Controller version is lower compared to the February 9th version while the Damage role has a larger range on it. EMP has been buffed with its base damage values being split based on the player's role. Surprise Attack has been buffed quite a bit since early February. I know Mental has received similar adjustments. I just like using base damage value ranges since they are easier to read and independent of a player's stats/build. Too bad we have to calculate the ranges ourselves and the numbers aren't published anywhere. EDIT: Just to note, it is important to indicate whether you are settings up PIs for your calculations. I do my calculations without the power interaction being included.
Me and kuro run basically the same spec ( he has a few more sp then me) so its easy for us to relay our numbers back and forth and most people i know and test with also run the 189 cr gear fully modded so its just easier for us this way. I just run every thing through the log analysis to make it easier on myself for most things. I do do base damages when i need to go all crazy science but i like to test most stuff with full stats for max potential most of the time and cause im usually trying to push everything to the max to see whats going on with things, whats to strong, to weak, what works with what. You know Gadgets is prob my least played power. After playing around with it and having it be so awkward at first it kinda turned me off from it mental did get a decent buff recently though. Edit: yea i set up my pi's when i'm not doing base numbers so these are all with pi's.
So whats your take on this...you've got to notice how things keep going up and up??? Newer powers keep getting better and better then older ones.
I think the topic is slightly more nuanced than just presenting damage averages and crit totals. The powers are balanced with other factors in mind like crowd-control, damage radius, vulnerability, and cooldowns. Let's take a look at 'Splosion: Base Damage Range: 99-108 (I believe this is the same for both roles) Damage Radius: 5 meters Cooldown: 3 seconds Vulnerable to Interrupt: None Crowd-Control: Only in Controller role Let's compare that to EMP: Base Damage Range: 88-97 in Controller role, 92-102 in Damage Role Damage Radius: 13 meters Cooldown: 2.5 seconds Vulnerable to Interrupt: Yes Crowd-Control: Only in Controller role I think you can see where the balancing factors come into play when comparing 'Splosion with EMP. 'Splosion receives a higher base damage range because of its low damage radius and higher cooldown. My experience in testing Munitions so far is that it is a lot harder to use 'Splosion in content versus EMP. That 5 meter damage radius is a pain to use on bosses that like to move around a lot. If 'Splosion's damage range increased, the base damage range would be decreased by some amount. If the cooldown on EMP was increased to 3 seconds, the base damage value range would be bumped up a bit too. I think it is worth looking at the individual powers to make sure nothing is out-of-line. Gadgets base-damage value testing revealed a large number of subtle bugs. As far as power creep, that will only come to light when people start calculating max damage rotations. If something is out-of-line, max damage testing will show that. I've only been testing Munitions for a day so far and have no idea what its max damage rotation is going to look like. EDIT: I do agree there are certain 300 base cost powers that need to be revisited. Certain powers like Sticky Bomb are worse than some 200 base cost powers.
Just my (opinion/wondering) i thought once all the power were on test they were gonna bring them all in line, i thought that was the plan i could be wrong on that.
Gneral info /a spreadsheet of at least the criterias for the respective DMG- ranges of powers of the same tier would be really helpful (if these actually exist which seems plausible). Better yet with base numbers for all powers ofc... Otherwise we ll run into GU50 ish problems I guess.
My question is, base is 300, but moves like divine light were already at 300 and for 1.6 they increased damage and power cost. So is there a small margin of powers that are really in the 350-400 power cost range and they just haven't updated the tool tip?
I've been looking at individual powers and max damage rotations and found a pretty good amount of discrepancies between older and newer powers. Thats what this tread is here to point out. To touch on your emp vs splosion, sure splosion is better but its a melee ability like you said so i'd compare it more with elecs eburst and its better then that.. When making comparisons i compare similar abilities to similar abilities like eburst-splosion. What i originally posted was just general numbers and anyone that has been testing can easily see that newer abilities are better then older abilities plain and simple. Like i mentioned in my original post electric used to be a top power but as more powers have been added its been passed up by many and by as much as 15k dps in some cases and thats a huge difference. Thats about the same gap nature is behind on live server and look at the spot its in. Powers should have no more then a 2-3k overall dps gap, anymore is going to put them behind a bit to much. Imo nothing should be hitting 40k plus cause nothing in the older powers does and that kind of creep up in damage is going to start to put powers with longer setup times behind. Right now since damage is kinda low 28 34k for a big hit all powers that abide by those rules are working very well with each other but when you have things hitting almost 50k not only is that getting us closer to the setup issues we have on live server cause of big instant damage but also its much better then older powers. And Pen common man you should know me and Kuro are all over the max damage rotations and man let me tell you the different ranges the powers range from....wow not good. Except muni still working on that one.
At this time i didn't feel i needed to bust out the graphs and charts cause we're not really at that point yet. What i wanted to do was make the dev's aware that something has gone wrong in their formula. Everything used to be the same and consistent then all the sudden stuff started to come out hitting some pretty crazy numbers for what we previously had on test. No charts needed just log onto test use some older powers compare similar abilities with new powers added and you'll easily see the differences. Players who have been testing and i mean really testing can clearly see what im talking about and hopefully the devs to.
If you're conducting extensive testing, could you post your full results? I'm thinking it would be helpful to see the min-max non-crit damage ranges for all 300 base cost powers. That's a gigantic project though and it would be easier if the developers could post the damage ranges. There are certainly specific powers like Sticky Bomb that need to be rebuffed. I've been seeing cases where 200 base cost powers surpass the damage output of 300 base cost powers.
Thats a lot of work to do and honestly im not up for it lol thats why i posted just some general numbers just to make the dev's aware there was a issue. They should be able to to figure it out themselves very easy all you have to do is jump on a new power and compare it to a older one. The differences are very blatant. I'm not expecting them to run max dps potential loadouts but just standing around and casting powers you can clearly see how things have gone up. If it gets to the point where we are revisiting the powers for final balance and we get a few powers in and this is still a issue i guess i'll be kinda forced to outline each specific powers damage but at this time no thanks lol
^ Thats pretty much what I had in mind (+ a brief explanation IF its not about rebalancing only). To make sure everyone is on the same page this time. At least some general info about this rather obvious issue. Wasnt really directed at you should have been more clear I guess.
There is a power creep, revisiting my OG Earth power compared to fire and munitions and well the infamous upheaval and jackhammer is lower then what it was. I thought the revamp was made to have various loadouts within the same power a option to use vs Live AM. *Now it just feels like it's just find the AM within 30 powers and ahh good luck.* The measurement's between speed, cooldowns, animation times, channels vs damage = time spent isn't being accounted for, across all 14 power sets is the greatest unbalanced thing I've seen so far. The time spent with weapons or cooldowns/channels, animations isn't worth the damage in all 14 powers some more then others.
