Work In Progress Powers and Balance: Introducing Midrange

its always bad for dot classes because people believe burst is all that matters because it tops the scorecard but in acuality those boss battles with a boss and tons of adds go down way faster with a dot class in there but noone cares because it doesn't win in the over all scoreboard the community in this game is very sad to me

Managing power and spamming power are two separate things by my definition. I believe the word used was spam if not then I am mistaken. So yes I don't believe someone can spam their powers with only replenishing adapter as there power source. If that was what he was stating. I am still not sure on that one. I did not miss weapon damage buff it is just not a part of our conversation nor is it relevant.

How would you be burning faster if the npc's are raised to match your new potential damage output. To me that is an equal effect. You raise the health of an npc or the defense to compensate for more burn then you have the same thing as before. It is like raising your damage from 10,000 to 20,000 per a hit but then raising the health of the npc from 40,000 to 80,000 to compensate. It still take 4 hits to kill them but at the end the hated score board will show you did 80,000 damage number instead of 40,000 which is all this effectively will do. the worst case in this scenario is the support role can't or doesn't use their new potential damage increase, meaning the dps now has to burn twice as much. So more DPS stacking.

I get what you are saying about pvp but let's face it these changes are only being made with pve in mind. Every change that has been made to pve has made pvp worst. pvp needs to be completely separate of any pve updates so it can be fixed.

No it wasn't what he was trying to imply.
he was saying both Celestial and Hard Light can do their roles weaponless and that it's pretty efficient without a troll in mind.

If weapons aren't relevant why do you keep bring up weapons for roles only?
(Im truly not trying to be mean either)

About your question, not really. The only thing different is that you have a 20% (assuming that you're using core strength and max damage) modifier compared to a constant 60% modifier. Spec and stuff (whether you get damage crits and spec into might/prec)
They have to up the health, as expected. Keep in mind we dont know if roles will get the damage scalar according to range.
if they do get the damage scalar, Then it'll take less.

True but it gives roles a fighting chance instead of being a dps whipping toy, like they've been for years.

I saw celestial... you had at me that. Hurry up and update it then I will be occupied for months to come

I have a question pertaining to that.

For the part where you said this:
All powersets will have melee (<7m) damage increased
Stepping into maximum risk results in maximum damage potential

Is this only applying to AM? Or is it a general statement addressing all abilities within the powerset?

First off support roles are not balanced in any way shape or form. Ex Sorcery and Nature have a higher healing crit chance and potency than celestial and electric. Quantum stuns compared to the other classes, etc.

No support role will be able to spam their AM. As a support role you will have to break and do a WM or weapon attack eventually. And to answer your first question, as long as there is a controller giving PoT and occasional recharge( once every 10s) you dont need power regen( as a healer or troller) to perform AM.

Also this works for any power other than nature. Hence nature already has a power back mechanic in healer role. You are missing the main point and that point is by playstyle.

Saying WM to get some power back is like saying Nature power back mechanic is balanced with the other healing powers.

This is more to bridge the damage gap, not giving support roles a major increase in damage. Surely if you were here since January 2011 you will see how this is bridging the damage gap between support and dps to match the original concept.

For celestial it is possible for me to maintain this power balance due to cast time. Roughly every 2 combos equal 1 tick of PoT. At the end of a rotation simply use WM 1-3 times and repeat. For sorcery its simply cast wait cast. Same for Electric. For a gadget controller it would simply be doing the AM so fast that you would go back into WM combo after 2 rotations which for controllers isnt much due to PoT not starting the AM.

Support roles are supplying support damage but you have to look at the bigger picture. How many people complained about the solo and then people told them to run it as a dps, then again if you wanted to play as a tank and tank everything, how limited would you be in solo content, or in small group content such as duos. When everyone complained about support roles in duos. So you have to look at the bigger picture not just for raids.

If you were to give support roles power regen it would be OP. Think about it, a controller who has POT and power regen through weapon + power regen through AM would be extremely OP. If nature didnt already have a damage reduction while in bug form it would be OP. Tanks are already in melee range so them doing the AM is already giving them a big boost in damage potential so there has to be a limit somewhere.

As to my kicking response, you stated that trollers/tanks and healers would run out of power trying to do the AM. If so thats poor power management, if they cannot balance when to do the AM and when not to do the AM, then they are hindering the group and the group will most likely kick them.

This change the devs are proposing gives a better incentive to play as support and possibly opens up new mechanics going forward where support roles will get teleported away and have to fight their way back (*Darkseid fight*).

I think this is a step in the right direction for all roles and no power regen is perfectly fine. However you cannot necessarily complain about it until you have tried it for yourself.

Try it out.

Give yourself PoT
Cast recharge
run the AM using only 4 powers( with some powers only 2)
then go to WM combo for about 10s and then repeat.

If you run out of power then reduce the spamming of the AM. Best to do a WM combo going into the AM. Also I run with power colas, reserve tank and replenishing adapter to conserve power.

I think the biggest question is. Will melee damage be equal to rage melee damage. Or will rage melee damage always be greater because it is a melee based AM?

YAY OMG!!!
YES!!!!!

Fair enough. Your post doesn't really mention anything about weapons. Given that some weapons lend themselves better to range (rifle, bow) and others lend themselves better to melee (brawling, staff), has there been any discussion about tweaking the weapon performance in a similar fashion wrt midrange and distance scaling?

Hopefully the tooltips are updated, stating which powers are best for which ranges.

So, from my understanding, I'm being told that full damage potential can only be accessed by being at close range to a target? I'm having a hard time rationalizing that. We have a power set called munitions. So, do bullets, and missiles, do less damage to a target if shot from a farther distance? If Superman stands 20 feet from a target and shoots it with heat vision, while Batman sneaks up behind it and punches it, will that punch do more harm than a laser? If a meteor travels thousands of miles through space, and crashes in to a plant, will it do less damage than a pebble that fell from only feet above ground?

Should a player who is smart enough to stay out of the way of danger, save work for the healer, while allowing the Tank and Controller to do crowd control, be punished by doing less damage than one who jumps in the middle of everything?

Is Melee the most powerful, tactically efficient, and difficult form of fighting, and should it be considered my full potential?

High risk high reward seems like the opposite of balance, and the kind of thing that causes problems in a team environment.

I don't know, this seems like a bunch of garbage to me. I think the devs just want balance to sound more difficult than it is because the other explanation is that they are playing the power respec game that anyone with half a brain knows that's what they are doing.

I play a nature character and nothing in mepps original posts address what I know to be the problem with my power set. For me it's quite simple; it has nothing to do with my range and everything to do with how slow my rotation is. The only way I can explain it is by spelling out what I believe would 100 percent balance nature with the "op powers" of the moment. And mepps if you happen to read this, I'd love to hear what you think because I just don't understand your explanation of how damage works.

Natures main problem is that it loses out on damage to sets of adds. This is the case in all content but becomes more and more apparent in the lower tier content. Here is how you balance nature and as I said before, it's really quite simple.

1st) natures am powers need to be clippable, functioning exactly like ice so our spores get out faster- savage growth-vine lash-brier-harvest all hit within a split second of one another. Maybe the animations for savage growth and vine lash need to be changed, I don't know, but this is what needs to happen.

2nd) a small amount of burst damage needs to be added to savage growth and vine lash similar to mentals first few am powers. Something in the 4000-6000 range would be perfect. Brier needs to stay where it is at but become way more consistant. Harvest is fine where it is at as well.

3rd) shape shifting needs to be smoothed out. When going into wolf form it takes to long before I can begin hitting powers. Change the animation of the wolf needing to flex before powers can be activated.

Aaaaaaaand whala, there you have balanced nature. So don't give me any of this crap about "hey some powers started working in the middle" whatever the hell that means. Some powers are OP because they hit for 100k plus and some are op because pets are hitting hard as all get out and some are op because their powers are super fast.

Yes I agree, the tooltip for all powers will need a serious overhaul.

As the goal is balance, I don't see them purposely making any powerset significantly more powerful at any range than any other.

"Third, address all weapons to account for midrange
This must be completed to properly balance the remaining powers that utilize weapons to supplement their damage potential"

That's a quote from the OP.

Yea so rage mid range might need a buff, but dreadful blast has seen enough changes already.

Forget you, what about us Electricity players? We need it more than anyone in this forum.

Yikes! I missed that line. Thanks for the pointer.

IKR! As an Electricity DPS its a joke compared to other might based powers. Plus why have a move like Voltaic Bolt but its ungoldy weak. And i think Word of Power should have been a electric exclusive move since we have no burst damage, well until this balancing thing happens anyway. I better see Electricity with some burst powers and even a voltaic state that gives you damage bonus after preforming powers more than once like ice armor or how Rage has blood lust, or hl with increased damage after long combo.