Powers, revamp, and balance

i wouldn't say it's a "top" power, however it does work, as there is technically no such thing as the "best" power. do some powers under perform? yes, yes they do. nature and sorcery come to mind as does mental, but that's to be expected as they have specific power interactions that are "supposed" to make them OP but that are more hassle than they're worth. personally i don't use things like gorilla form (cause being a giant ape all the time is not my thing nor does it coincide with my character's lore unlike briar and other nature abilities), arbiter of destiny etc. the only way to make said powers "better" would be to make them even less cookie cutter than the revamp already made them by making form changes and other more powerful supercharges optional. the disparity and differentiation isn't from some lack of stats or what not, but rather just how the powers work. there's nothing wrong with sorcery dps as it does good damage on single targets via pet damage, at least sorcery can actually get a hit in before say a fire, hardlight, rage, celestial etc dps just straight up destroys the mob/boss before a nature toon can get their dot off.

The Gemini artifact make nature one of the top powers. Obsidianchill video also helped. Without prec sorcery is bad. It's some who make it work. Between 2 equally skilled players, sorcery will lose everytime. Badly in new content

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/novas-magic-mastery-guide-to-sorcery.347/ here's a fairly old sorcery guide, though i would imagine few of the power interactions haven't been "entirely" ravaged by the 2 or 3 power retcons we've had in the 5 years since. eye of gemini would make anybody with aoe damage/heals (which is most healer powers) godly, however this is not exactly skill as it's using a crutch to do what one could not normally do. if you honestly think it'd help you be a better healer/dps go for it, with the number of aoe damage and heal abilities that sorcery possesses and given it's similarity to nature as a dot/hot power, can you honestly argue sorcery would benefit any less than nature?

Nature I wouldnt consider underperforming. Gorilla form is viable in most content. Meleeing in Wolf form with a good Scrap and EoG is ridiculous on adds. The trick is setting dots, and reapplying or spreading to new enemies when possible. AoE parses range between 30k (normal form) to 50 to 60k in Wolf Form. Wolf form with ST still nets me in the 20k region on average. Ive hit upper 20's like 26k to 29k more since the drop of EoG. Wolf was on the verge of OP status before Gemini even came. Learning when to change forms is key with Wolf to maximize crit buff. I use sonic cry with thorn burst and savage growth with briar and serpent call in Wolf. Normal I use serpent call, briar, vine lash, harvest, and voracious plants. I would put Nature in top tier as far as dps. Its only drawback is the form change SC's. Once you time everything out good its sits up thwre with the best DPS powers as far as potential. Especially in elite content against enemies with higher health pools, which means extended time doing damage and not setting, or spreading Dots.

Sorcery is at the bottom off mid tier, to bottom tier and is best used in melee range. Ranged falls off too much with those projectiles. Both Sorcery and Nature excel with prec specs.

snip


Before anyone says "Nature isn't underperforming" remember this:
1) dots take time to set up
2) in that time, the others in your raid/alert are damaging those targets too


Sitting in the comfort of your own base, or league hall, smashing away at sparring targets; I can easily see how you might believe Nature dps is fine. Those targets have lots of health, don't move around, and don't have 7 other people attacking those targets. The second you are in a raid, that 30k health add is going to be hit by up to 8 people. Your Nature dot? how long does that take to apply and go through a rotation? I can slide up on that add with my Munitions toon, hit three buttons, and that add is gone. Same with my Rage toon. [and my toons are subpar, except my healer. she is mediocre ] How many of you out there can one shot adds or 'two shot' adds before the Nature toon gets there dot animation off?

Don't get me wrong, Nature dps is okay. All dps powers are okay. Some shine better on sparring targets than they do in actual content... and more importantly, in different situations (example: single targets vs multi target... open area vs enclosed hallways)

I guess I'm just wrong then. Its not about slapping dummies for high parses. There is a way for Nature to perform on a high level. Setting Dots does take some time. But u dont always need 3. Throw up 2 and bust in melee. The damage spike more than makes up for the 1st couple hits.

This is the biggest issue with balance, correction, peoples opinion on balance is there are high performing people with every powerset. Some people think Fire is weak, but Fire is very strong, same with Nature, Mental, Ice, Atomic, Sorcery. Equal player skill doesnt exist between individuals. Some people just maximize and capatilize on certain powerset s and their abilities. They figure out how to make them work.

Sure there are easier powersets to figure out versus others. Revamp gave us the ability to explore potential and try things in a different manner. Certain powersets have advantages over others, but can make up for them in other ways. High level players at end game take the time to learn and make sleeper dps toons.

Opinions are just that. Opinions. Just because one person hasnt unlocked the potential and/or seen the potential doesnt mean it doesnt exist. A lot of people would be surprised by what some powers can do. Too many look for the easiest power and go to YouTube for LO's. Play the game, learn the power, stick with it. Stop looking at others and their cookie cutter builds.

much like hal i was referring to the dot's taking so long to activate, by time you actually lay down a dot many powers can have already insta-cast a burst and did just as much damage almost instantly as it took a nature user to 1. cast it with animations, 2. wait for the power to take effect (about 2 seconds), and 3. wait for the damage which will be done over the course of several seconds all JUST to get the initial damage done by a single sorcery, rage, hardlight, ice, mental, atomic, quantum etc single target or aoe. i don't use the forms (and i would imagine someone commenting about "cookie cutter builds" would understand why) as they don't fit my toon's lore and as a general rule i consider supercharges rather time consuming and costly outside of maybe canine form which i wish was a triumvirate style supercharge summons instead. i don't recall poison ivy ever having that problem or swamp thing for that matter.

The forums mirror the game community too much at times. Too many know it alls or dont know enoughs for there to be any "true" balance. Not talking about anybody in particular. In all honesty if we all had some humble pie we can learn from each other.

Do I think there are underperforming powers. Yeah.
Do I think there could be some fixes to bring things closer together. Absolutely.
But, the bottom line is, we got what we got. Its on us to make the most of it.

Recoil I get what alot of people are saying about setting Dots. I know that all too well. What I'm saying is there is way to overcome setbacks, like with any other powerset s. Fire and Ice have long casts so its optimal to be quick to adds and start with heavy hitters. Laying down a PI is not always optimal. Sorcery has projectiles that can take to long to reach targets, so the solution is get alot closer, melee range or close to it. Nature has to set dots to be optimal, so the solution is stay on the heals of tanks and be quick to adds. Sometimes its not optimal to setup 3 dots, sometimes its just 1 or 2, or none. Get what you can and pick your spots to open up the heavy damage. I've gotten quite good at Nature In content. Can I still learn how to be better, definitely. There are solutions to overcome setbacks. Its on us to figure it out.

Lmfaooooo you finally got it hahahahaha. Please go back and find the post where I said I was a PftT sorc... all I said was that sorc is one of the best dps powers in the game which I still stand by. In the sorc guide I posted a loadout that did on average 1k more dps than obsidian chills loadout. That’s the issue with dps today. They just go to your tube and copy a loadout without testing. No disrespect to chills but the PftT loadout I posted was better. And as he agreed with me, sorc does better a precision. And that’s without me using glitches (dw flurry shot animation clipping).

A dps is supposed to find a way to make their power work. These days people (like yourself) just look for YouTube and are done.i have already stated in previous threads that some powers are better as precision while others are better as might. And earlier in this thread I clearly stated that I have multiple artifacts maxed for dps.

You asked me to say my parsers which I did but that wasn’t good enough since I didn’t show proof even thou I clearly stated I didn’t know how to post pictures. And before you say that precision is broken just stop. If it were than you’d see every single power specced as prec.

Still apply. If a sorcery dps go up against Gadgets or rage prec, they will get beat. I don't think prec is broken, but if a power is only good one way, which might get nerfed because of complaints, that power need to be balanced.

Balanced?
in your opinion.... should all powers be:
1) all buffed to meet the top power
2)the tops nerfed to the middle, and the bottoms buffed to the middle
3)all nerfed to meet the bottom power


In theory, if all powers only did one point of damage, there will always be a player that figures out that:
1)using power A with artifact B buffed with cola C
does more damage than
2) using power A clipped with power B buffed with power C
(in theory, just random stuff there) There are WAY too many variables to get into to determine which powers need to be balanced... and in my own (humble) opinion, there was an artifact released with this last DLC that really makes some powers shine.

YEs a prec sorc will loose to a gadgets (might or prec). That’s because gadgets works no matter what playstyle you use. Rage and sorc of even skills can go either way. I have not seen any good prec rage players. Combo powers are just not very suited for precision playstyle. Combo powers have been changed so that their last hit of a combo is the strongest hit. And few powers outside of these combos do any damage. The best thing rage has for prec dps is the dots it has. But they have a bit of a dovetail to them which makes it not as suited for prec as other powers. Sorcery on the other hand has a lot going for it to be amazing as a prec dps power. It has good dots that are 12 seconds long so you don’t have to keep re casting them. Also has pets to use as an added background damage. And it also has the accelerated weapon of destiny back mod to keep the venom buff up for a longer portion of the time (6 on 6 off without mod, 6 on 5 off with mod). These things make sorcery an amazing prec power.

Nature is also amongst the best prec dps power due to its large variety of poison dots one of which is a sc generator and its ability to refresh them all and spread them with one power. Nature still does more damage as might than it does as precision thou. Also, nature is very strong with Gemini, the thing is that wolf form does not have a sc head mod to allow it to regen sc as fast as other powers. You can go with vacuum, gale or speed drain but that means you loose your extra dots that will be more beneficial in longer fights. For fast dying adds it’s best to just be in wolf using 3 abilities maybe even serpent between adds as 1 dot. That will go farther with nature than constantly going in and out of wolf. There is also a shifting delay between firms that costs you 1 sec of Gemini damage stacking. So nature is not as broken as people say it is.

Like I said, not offense to chills but it’s not always do what he says because he has a YouTube channel. People need to actually test their own powers. Since his sorc video was posted a have seen a larger number of terrible sorcery players in game. Which make the good ones look bad. Even the loadout I posted is better and yet I found another pftt loadout after posting that that does similar to my old one if not a little better. No disrespect to chills but that’s because I was sorcery longer and my testing is a little more thorough than his.

And btw the best Gemini dps power is probably earth, not nature. Earths SC generator is glitched in my mind. It’s a damaging ability that can clip other powers and builds sc. no other sc generator can clip as far as I know.

EDIT: I think it’s a glitch because it’s the only dps power that can do it. I don’t think it should be fixed. Instead I think all sc generators should be changed to be able to clip like earth does.

Did you test the total damage of your 12s dots? I gues s it should be around 5-6k (very low compared to your weapon damage ), as a prec dps, you should use a burst power insted of dots power (or better is just your SC generator clips with your weapon buff). The difference for precision build is just SC generator / 50% + 100% SC, I already said this in another thread. The other stuff, like Invisiblity - burst power (mental/gadget), is an optional, and it won't make a big difference in scoreboard.

For powers that don't have 12s dots, it's not really a problem, here's an example: Mental doesn't have any 12s dots, but it has strong burst that equals to almost double the 12s dots, same as Gadget. Now I just don't know why people don't talk about Mental when it's a really good prec power, always Gadget . Moreorver, for precsion, Mental has a better SC than Gadget, the ghost gives you crits + damage based on your CR which is really good because of your low might. I also believe that when talking about precision, every power is on same page, you only need a weapon buff + fast weapon combo.

I used to be a prec dps, I have tried all powers and I can't barely see a big gap between each power, despite of SC generator/SC. If a power doesn't have a good SC (like Light), I will use venom boost, that's enough for me to be on top of scoreboard. Right now I'm not prec dps because it's boring when playing prec (you don't feel that? ), it's just the same LO with every power (weapon buff/ robot sidekick). The last thing is that the game is very easy, and if i go prec, it will be even easier => everything will be cakewalk, and it's absolutely boring to me

Yes if you treat all powers than they will produce similar results. But that’s not optimizing the loadouts. People think that going prec is just big white numbers with big yellow numbers. That’s bad damage and for the most part you’re better off going full might. The reason sorc and nature are so good is that they have background damage that has less maintenance. This allows you to keep using weapon attacks with minimally stopping to hit powers. Every time you stop to do a night attack you loose damage since you’re prec specced. I find this more interesting than hitting powers 1234 like munitions and other night based powers.

I highly doubt if someone else in the game can beat ANY Nature DPS with 160 EoG.