Work In Progress Powers and Balance: Introducing Midrange

Way 2 many players have gotten by hiding in the back and hopingg the aoe does not hit them. How many players doing this learn machanics and improves? LnW, new elite alert are 2 examples lf people messing up the machankc because its hard 2 see. Well if ur tempted and rewarded for being up close this should improve. If ur close enough 2 see the bosses well u can then watch for the ever apparent tells.

Make no doubt about it there will be a learning curve and some wont like it. I know I tank and I will immediately begin wokrking with league trolls.. we will really buckle down on me the tank roping em up and our trollers containing. Stuns in the back suddenly no bueno.

Most important this should drag us away from pew pew land

Id guess they are the most complex 2 pull off. I love electric. I love it but hey we gotta go for the big picture. The task they are on ks a year in. (Its been atleast a yr I think) now the devs are hooking up support roles and adding mid range Into an allready insanly large job. I say thanks and I love it.

For my beloved electric....... well damn, lol. Ill except it being last as lkng as it allows the entire project to finish faster. Keep in mind if they did electric first it might need further adjusting when other powers are done. Example original rafe and celestrial. Began op because they were the 1st with AMs. By the end of AMs being installed both rage and celestrial needed retooled.

Here is hoping they consider a temporary dot boost as a baind aid. if something with little 2 no effort could help then sweet but id personally not want to take away from the big picture to fix my little corner. I know it is not great position but going last they will have the advantage of learning from the process.

Some of you act as if support roles will be miles ahead in damage after this phase. Speaking as Nature player who already has maximum damage possible as a Healer you won't *that* close to a true Damage rotation even as a Battle Healer. You roughly get somewhere in the range of 1/4 of that damage maybe 1/2 depending on how well versed the player is. That shouldn't change all that much since in general all Damage rotations will also get a buff along with weapons for support roles.

I bring up Nature because between Damage and Healer you are not missing out on much in terms of "special damage modifiers" like Savage State or 5 Chill Effects, etc. When you use Swarm, for example, as a Healer it has a similar potency as it would in the Damage role. Attacks like Scissor Kick combined with Carnage don't change their modifier between each role either. If you did use Poison Spores you'd get the full potency (minus Savage Growth in human form). That said in order to heal decently effectively I need at least 3 loadout slots so I am never getting the full Advanced Mechanic to begin with.

Some people bring up easy combos like Distract -> Paralyzing Dart but isn't the whole point of using Distract to help pickup someone? If you use it too early and someone goes down well you can't use it. You really *shouldn't* do that combo for damage. Stuff like that is great in theory but that doesn't mean it should be used or is wanted because it messes with your support tools.

I'm just pointing out that you don't use a battle support Build because you "just" want to do damage. When you do both you expect to support at least a bit which means your support tools should be used for support and wearing support (mixed) gear lows stats. Support roles will not take over Damage roles and you will likely only see up to 1/4 or 1/3 of their damage on average.

(This will be my only post about that specific subject. I just wanted to point it out.)

While bullets don't do less damage at a distance than close up, if you rationalize the increase by thinking how being closer allows us to aim at more vital spots on an enemy, the damage increase makes more sense then.

Melee will do more damage than ranged per attack, it is true, but that is highly dependent on the player paying attention to the tells of the enemies and keeping alive. If someone is using a melee loadout and is having to keep moving to avoid enemies' attacks or even dying because of it, the fact that melee is doing more per hit than ranged would be balanced by that fact that the ranged person can stay in a safer position in the back and do more attacks in comparison.

You actually can't.



It will be interesting to see where support roles end up with damage of support roles. If the damage is the exact same you would expect about 58.82% a Dps with Max Damage and Core Strength's damage without Core Strength or Max damage assuming equal stats, about 64.70% with one of the mods, and about 70.59% with both mods. So it is likely that with stats taken into account support roles won't really become a really significant shift in damage.

Although I'm am still worried about the different ease with which powers can access AMs in their support roles, as some pockets of the community tend to find dumb ways to discriminate against players who don't play a select few powers. Hopefully the weapon adjustments can help.

Overall, though I am looking forward to the changes.

Dont matter. As long as I get to battle heal at full potential, Im alright.
Currently dps do 10 times the damage of a role.
Coming within 40-60% of that damage would be great.

I dont expect dps replacement. I expect to not be a whipping toy to a dps.

Here is a thought, everyone who is Begging for electric to be buffed first remember that they are buffing weapon damage 1st, which means the potential for electric will be greater than fixing the power itself immediately. I am a very good electric dps, and I don't play AM 1st. If they were to buff the DoTs immediately then you would have b everyone on the forums saying electric needs to be nerfed. If buffing the weapons makes electric compete better, which it will as I am already competitive using brawling dual wield and staff, then they have an easier time adjusting electrics DoT powers.



Example: as it stands I can use dual flurry and crit for up to 60k(maybe higher as I'm not fully stacked on precision(currently4055) with a 123 DW. You couple that with hitting 3-4k base shockwaves and My 3 DoT charges anywhere between 2500-3000(or better depending on enemy level) then you ADD in the damage from electrocute and its second tick via PI enemies can be melted pretty swiftly if and only if you as an electric dps use the AM appropriately instead of going 1234 powers. Clipping is still a huge part of this game even if it was never intended. If they are going to buff my Dual flurry because it's melee attack then you are looking at 100k+ hits from a weapon attack only.

If melee powers from electric get buffed on top of that.... The OP threads will be coming from everywhere. I believe that this is the best course that they can take because they then have to adjust every power to fit in line with the weapons. Earth and sorcery I can see being first because they have pets great melee attacks and with great weapon damage they will have to reduce pet damage or they will be drastically better than any other power.

You guys aren't thinking clearly when you are rebutting the development teams plans. I don't always agree with the team, but this is the most thought out plan to date to rebalance content. Great job TEAM! I've been a melee user since launch so I'll have no issues adjusting to this new set up!

I don't think anyone is seriously thinking that support damage will rival that of DPS. The fact is that the divide wasn't always as huge as it is now. A standard healer could do about 1/5 the damage of a DPS. Battle healers could get to about 1/3-1/2. Now, is more like 1/10 for regular and not much better for battle. No wonder teams are so quick to drop support roles. If we could get back to the old ratios, having extra DPS wouldn't be such a dramatic time saver. Sure, some teams would still DPS stack, but I don't think it would be as prevalent.

Exactly. Not expecting DPS being rivaled. Im just expecting to put out more damage and do my role at the same time.

Actually i'm gonna have to disagree with you on that. Remember, they said the order is subject to change meaning they might put electric first, We Don't Know. Second, the powers as they currently are are not unique. Not in the way you are putting it. The current system is set as one power is stronger than the other, not because whether its ranged or not. For example, Ice Fire and Gadgets are the highest hard hitting powers because of the buff they got. It pisses everyone off because it makes us think the devs are money hungry and want us to spec to every power that gets buffed just to put money in their pockets when in reality, based on this update that they stated, they are starting to rebalance powers. It finally hit us that they were investigating this after all. They even stated that it took time to finally get things in order. No power should perform more or less than another power because most people just dont think its fair. However if you think that Electric and Nature should hit the hardest, then be my guest. However, when you have no trolls or tanks to group up with for an instance when you need the gear, don't come crying to the devs on the forums begging for the powers to be equal.

Diversity, my ***. This does not bring diversity to us. This brought more money to the devs pockets as we kept spending money to spec to every newly buffed power which led to and overpopulation of DPS's with that power set and no support roles, meaning harder to queue for instances. It never used to be hard to find a tank until ice and fire got buffed.

So will Atomic come out with these changes ? Or will it get updated when the rest are?

Dude you are forgetting that THIS TAKES TIME! Meaning they cant do it all in 4 GU's. You can't xpect them to rush everything just because you want it so quickly. I'm betting that its very complicated for then to focus on all of what they stated. You are acting as if its that easy. Heck, why dont you become a dev? Then you could see that not everything can be accomplished when the audience wants it.

They got buffed 4 years ago too?

This might be some good news. I'm sceptical but if done right these updates could improve combat greatly for all roles. I hope they will.

This....is what i'm wanting to know as well. If everyone has the same melee potential as rage, then the whole revamp was a waste and completely pointless and a proper one (not rushed) will be in need. It can come after powers that are in dire need, but that question should be answered to provide better insight for rage players.

great news after this is complete can we move on to support roles example electric healing power back mechanic with bio surge and bio capacitor with bio charged abilities

The goal is balance. All powersets will have equivalent average DPS potential at each of the three ranges. To have one be superior to another at any range is counter to the concept of balance.

Well, know you that popular saying: "who laughs last, laughs best?" perhaps will be the case of Electric but only if WM receive a buff too and if you have noticed the powers that will receive a buff are the pet powers and the DoT powers which are powers that both use WM in your attacks.

I'm also seeing a short advantage to Earth, Sorcery and Rage even after all this balance, because these powers have the fastest burst damage in the game in what would be an advantage compared to other powers.

Rage melee and midrange need to be buffed, because rage melee is still behind some powers midrange