That’s not true at all. During AM powers have one loadout that could be used or else you might as well be a support. If you’re a 1234 combos you’d always had to use that emp/mass terror ability. If you were earth and sorcery you had no choice but to run crystal/fury and fortify/offering. Powers were at the most copy paste as they every were during AMs. Now that AMs are done, yes you have meta loadouts but you can still use other loadouts and still be decent. Back than if youd don’t use those abilities than you were not doing any damage at all. And you want to talk about unbalance? Electric and nature were incredibly terrible. There was a much larger gap between the bottom powers and the top powers. Mental gadgets and ice were just purely better than any other power during that time. And as for loadouts today all being the same. My main is Prec and I use burst and not dots. I also don’t use flurry shot either. My might also use dots and burst. So no there isn’t just 2 loadouts. Maybe only 2 YouTube loadouts that people gravitate towards. But that’s cause most people don’t even test loadouts, just grab something from YouTube and that’s it
When I played lantern DPS at one time, I still remember, that they wanted to force me to play controller because the lantern didn't hit hard enough x)
Am wasn’t as different as people like to make out and both systems have similar restrictions. You can technically use more of your powers but you need artifacts now to make it work otherwise you’ll be doing super sub par damage just like before. Plus with AM everyone had access from the moment they picked up the game. Sucked for high SP people but yea not much difference between a high SP player playing an OP power and a low SP player during the AM era. Now instead of SP it’s how much time and money you dump into artifacts, yay so much better lol. Elec and nature never received their AM update before the star revamp. Any discussion about their underpoweredness is mute due to that fact. AMs were unbalanced because they were done individually, resulting in most cases in a FOTM whenever the latest worked upon one was updated. There was an intended balance pass once all powers were complete which was obviously never completed, so comparing balance of a true stats revamp to the AM era is completely inaccurate. Sorcery (my own power) was way more versatile as it pretty much had been this entire games life, and non pet builds were entirely possible just not OP. People were rarely being kicked for their power during AM that’s another myth, AM was the overpowered era, no one cared what power someone was as long as they had one hard hitter. Alerts barely needed support, maybe one depending on the content. Otherwise it was pretty much 4 dps and no one cared what power as long as one of the OP ones was there (ice, mental, sorcery, earth), same thing with raids, healing was so easy at that point we had so much resto abundance plus we burn stuff so fast, that’s why mechanics were so asked for since everything melted so quickly and worst still people would just burn through the mechanics anyway. A lot of problems with the AM era but people try to over state how bad it was for non OP powers, unfairly pointing to the two powers that NEVER RECEIVED AN UPDATE to make a point just shows to clouded people’s memories are. I personally hated the stats revamp, turned sorcery in to a generic power with none of the uniqueness it had before, it such a miserable shadow of its former self it genuinely feels disgusting to use. All powers basically operate the same now, so yes while there is more variability between the powers, each power just feels like a skin of another one rather than its own unique thing (over simplifying here but you get the gist). The OP hit the nail on the head, one load out or not, each power felt like it’s own power, unique and different. The stats revamp homogenised everything into a boring carbon copy of each other.
Should the AM come back, yes and no. A lot of play-doh hit the fan between 2012 and 2017 with the fun mechanics. I liked the idea of each power having its unique powers and what you could do with them. For example, munitions came out and it is a channeling power. It had the headband and as long as you kept pulling weapons out of..your hat?..you kept up your damage and got power back. You could use many powers to accomplish this and could vary your loadout. Perhaps there could be a different headband for a different loadout to use for a different but similar effect. Another example, sorcery is pet based and you could cast off the pet and have your damage buffed so it be balanced as if you had a pet. You simply do higher damage until fury is summoned and then it takes over the heavy hitting. There is no ultimate loadout as each mechanic may require something different. Sometimes you need to break a lot of stuff and using an object breaking power is needed rather than a non object hitting power that causes a wipe. I would like the uniqueness to be brought back and every power be updated so we can have our non-standard reskinned loadouts back.
You can’t say that we should disregard the electric and nature AMs because they never received their update. The fact still stands that they were in a terrible position for the entire time. You are talking about what if’s. The FACT is that both powers were terrible during the AM eras. Both powers were stuck as support powers. And you say people weren’t getting kicked for being a power? You just said you were sorcery. Sorcery earth ice mental and gadgets were not getting kicked. Electric and nature were. You said that people didn’t care what power you were as long as there was 1 op person in the run? Doesn’t that show imbalance? As long as you have 1 op power the rest can be filled with whatever? Please tell me what uniqueness did sorcery lose? The sorcery AM was have fury out and hit offering to do damage? Did sorcery lose offering? No. Did sorcery lose fury? No. What exactly did sorcery lose? I agree that sorcery isn’t in a good spot. But to say it’s because it lost its uniqueness is just not true.
Do you even know what unique is? You’re saying they were better during AMs because they could do what you said. Guess what. Munitions can still chain channel abilities back to back. Sorcery can still use fury. Everything you are complaining about as not being unique anymore is still in the game. The people complaining about this seem to not actually miss the “uniqueness” that’s somehow gone but still in the game. What they really miss is the free easy damage that came from AMs. That’s the only part that’s gone. And I hope it never comes back
I'm sorry-- but not to go all Luke Skywalker on you, but it's amazing how everything you just said was wrong. That's just factually and demonstrably false. They both received an AM. HERE IS THE TEST ANNOUNCEMENT They were both predicated upon setting up DoTs and clipping in weapon attacks. They both took forever to set up, neither had good burst damage. They were identical clones of each other, much like Gadgets and Mental, or Earth and Sorcery. I really have to disagree with that statement. Nature and Electric were reskins of each other. Mental and Gadgets were reskins of each other. Quantum, with it's 1-2-3-4 became Mental and Gadgets light. Earth and Sorcery were identical except for the fact that Earth didn't have the MASSIVELY OP supercharge that Grand Summoning became. If anything just the opposite was true: most powers felt and played the same as the other powers, or at least 1-2 other powers. Advanced Mechanics sounded like a good idea-- something that would add complexity and variety to the game, but in practice wound up to be a *HUGE* dumbing down of the game that turned off a lot of very skilled players who enjoyed clipping and a fast-paced style of play. The AM era was not what I or any sane person would consider good. I'm not alone here-- it's not just me. Nothing I've posted is terribly original or insightful. In fact, these folks may have said it better (or at least more concisely)...
I want the orifinal combat system back Powers gave a damage modifier and you had to use weapons + animation canceling to be effective. More powers in your loadout were useful back then. Although people say AM pigeon holed you into one viable loadout, we are pretty much in the same spot today. A movement o iconic power is in almost every top tier damage loadout. Half of our powers are useless. We have the illusion of loadout diversity today.
Ok I used AM far too librerally there. There were two phases to the AM roll out. Sorcery was one of the first to get its am mechanic if I remember correctly. All powers got their AM mechanic but then there was a second phase. That we can call the OP AM phase for lack of a better term. This is what I’m referring to when I say nature and electricity never got their update. Throughout the rollout each power got its chance to be one of the FOTM powers. Nature and electricity were the next powers due to get their update when the devs announced the stats revamp and they would no longer be working on those powers. Those players had to wait an additional year or so, this is what I’m am referring to and questioning when people were saying that those two powers were awful. There was a specific reason and despite my incorrect use of the term AM the point remains the same, those two powers were lacking due to impending updates that never came. A few other minor points. Earth was stronger than sorcery marginally actually. I also feel like earth was more pfft based where as sorcery was weapon based so I’m not sure if they played the same but feel free to correct me. I didn’t say AM was great, I said I don’t like what stats revamp did to sorcery and I do feel like most of the variability comes from artifacts not the revamp itself. It was also a very long era and not a unified update like the stats revamp so comparisons are difficult and not as straightforward as some in this thread have made out.
I was quantum and still am. During AMs. The first update quantum got. It's first AM. It was stupid broken. A lot of powers were. The second pass was for balance. So maybe you worded this wrong? But most powers upon their initial AMs were broken or OP
We remember different stuff if you remember people getting kicked a lot. I exclusively pug and I never, not once ever saw someone get kicked solely for the power they were. Not saying it never happened, just saying I don’t think I it was as common as people make out. I would have expected to come across it at least once if that were so. Not saying it never happened either, just think you’re over stating it. The point was those powers were due an update, not like an if or a maybe, like a queue there were in a queue, it was established that they were the last on the list and each power was being worked on individually it’s not really unfair it’s just the way they were working on it. Again I never said it was balanced I simply said those two powers are a bad example of power imbalance during that era. Quantum was technically bad because it was slow but it put out big numbers, I remember someone doing the tests and showing that on boss damage they could keep up, but everything melted so quickly back then. Ok now for sorcery. Soul well nerfed and changed, can’t have 3 up like you used to. They changed the tick duration and I’m pretty sure it also no longer destroys the environment so no more easy vault runs. No more extra damage for enemies dying inside the soul well area. Changes to red soul and gold soul cloak. They even tried to take away the red soul aura before enough complaints made them bring it back. There were other changes but the soul well changes were some of the worst as it was one of the more unique powers. I don’t play other power sets but I feel like I remember other people complaining that a unique power or two was changed to become more uniform thus reducing the uniqueness of the powersets themselves.
I always felt like sorcery was the first. They said the pet and the offering combo was their AM. That was way way back I feel like 2014 if I remember correctly. I can’t remember why or what they were calling the second pass. I don’t remember every power becoming OP on the first pass but it’s entirely possible I wasn’t quite as active when it first first started. But by the second pass I was on the forums and much more aware of what was going on. The first truly OP update I remember was the quantum time bomb one, that was second phase if I remember correctly.
Have to agree with you there: two or three rounds of tweaking later and I still don't feel like Sorcery is in a great place. It's true that artifacts enable a lot of different play styles and bring some variety to the game. I do think revamp should get some credit for how it opened up all the powers in your power set though. No more choosing between Tesla Ball or Ionic Drain because you only got to pick 15 abilities.
I’m pretty sure they took all that stuff from sorcery for the AM not after the AM. But I’m not 100% on that. And soul well still destroys objects. I use it in the vault every single day so not sure what you’re talking about for that. Yes they did have a plan to update electric and nature again. That still doesn’t change that they were at the bottom of the barrel BECAUSE of AMs. That still doesn’t change the fact that people didn’t want electric and nature dps for content. During the AM era electric and sorcery where at a huge disadvantage to every single other power but a huge margin. Even in content where things didn’t die right away they would struggle. So you can’t say that it doesn’t count because they were in que to get an update. That is a terrible excuse. The gab between dps back than was much larger than any other point in the games history and that’s a fact. No “but they didn’t have their update” matters because that’s not how it works. And yes people would be kicked. It’s true they weren’t always kicked from raids. That’s because they would usually not even get into a group. If you had lfg open you’d see how many people would ask for your power type when making groups and for an electric and nature to get into a group there either needed to be no one else running for them to get a spot or they would need to be support role. So yes maybe they didn’t get kicked while in a raid but their pugging was not a fun experience. And another reason they didn’t get kicked is because they switched powers to something else. FOTM was a lot more common back than. And to be clear, I never said powers are perfectly balanced right now. But they definitely were worse back than
I think they reduced the range dramatically on soul well, I do remember doing vault runs after the revamp and it not working like it normally did and that was definitely changed during the revamp it wasn't changed during AM era. Yes you can say that but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, it's not an excuse, they didn't have an update, they were bad.... in comparison to powers that had an update, it wasn't like they were bad from the moment they got the update, they were simply the last on the list, but whatever we not gonna agree there. Again I really think you are overstating it, one of my guys I used to feat hunt with was nature all through the AM era and he had no problems dpsing in content. But whatever everyone's gonna have different experiences/memories yadda yadda.
Nature and Sorcery languished for over 2 years before they finally announced that they would not give those two powers their long overdue update in favor of the stats revamp they had announced in August of 2016. And then it continued in that fashion until the Stats Matter Revamp was released the following year. On the matter of Sorcery...It is in a bad state...but it's not in as horrible a state as Nature and Electric had been for all those years. I don't think it would need a complete revamp to fix its glaring issues. I do however hope that it doesn't take as many years to get the attention it needs and deserves....us Nature and Electric players haven't forgotten.
Reading these comments are hilarious. Revamp was done purely because of artifacts because nothing is balanced. Gadgets and mental still use a set l/o. Basically 1234. Sorcery is terrible now unless you ss prec or use pet build. Add electric to my first comment. AM wasn't bad as you all make it. Elec and nature was in a horrible state, but that's the devs fault. Devs never gave those 2 powers it AM update. Gadgets and mental was strong because players were using little cheats. Kinda like Gadgets of today.
Sorcery was the first AM. Im saying Quantum first pass at the AM. And it was OP its first time around.
