So, I'd like to discuss this data...rationally, please

The controllers in my leauge have no problems whatsoever supporting even 4 dps playing that way, and they're fine with it, I'm not the only one utilising this playstyle, and yes of course my power in was significantly higher then using a WM rotation.

Booo eww WM :>

Read the last 3 pages. Spytle just admitted the AM columns are most likely hybrid players using both am and wm. He's talking to Tunso to make a third colum for am only. Am alone is inferior to wm, i think everyone can agree on that.

Things that I would like to see viewable is: Number of Weapon mastery combos completed. Number of soders used. Number of Controller double ticks, encasements/debuffs. Number of crits etc.

Since AMs require power, knowledge of the powers used, some skill and they don't double as a block break or interrupt, but usually have vulnerabilities. They should easily do more damage than WM, not the other way around.

WM should be the training wheels used while you're learning to DPS that can get you good results, but not blow everything out of the water. Awesome mechanics should be the highest level of DPSing

Just to clarify again, true use of WM includes the precision combos plus the might crit (WM+crit). Every powerset can use dry WM combos with their AM. That's not the hybrid we're taking about. Not every powerset can utilize a true hybrid of WM+crit and AM. That's what is really at issue here. How many of these "Top DPS" are using both WM+crit and their AM to varying degrees, even if it's in serial fashion, in a true hybrid approach? An example would be Rage. They can, for instance, WM into Outrage and then combo (their AM). They aren't using WM+crit and the AM concurrently (i.e., in parallel). It's a serial hybrid. Earth and Sorcery, conversely, absolutely cannot get the WM crit while their AM (pet) is active, so they are likely the most balanced.

There are Powersets that obviously are intended to use WM combos and their AM like Nature, Electric, Sorcery, and Earth so far. Then there are powers where their AM can not be preformed at the same time they are also performing WM combos or "dry combos" as Remander puts it. These are the powers whose AM have to be balanced with both the WM combo and the crit at the same time. For example Fire can either stack volatility and use Mass Det or they can WM into a power like Spontaneous or Detonate for the crit window, they can't stack volatility and uses mass det in the crit window so their AM of volatility + mass det should be on par with someone doing WM combo into Detonate. Similarly, Celestial/HL/Rage cannot be doing a WM combo at the same time as they do a construct or power combo. Therefore balancing the construct combos with the WM combo + crit window should be easily done. The only tricky part comes in the first might hit of a construct or power combo can use the WM crit window and for Rage this is a big deal because they have generous might hits so something would need to be done about that. For HL and Celestial though the bulk of the damage is back loaded into the combos so it shouldnt cause any issues.

You're describing this throughout your post as if it's a major error, but I don't see that. All damage can include WM combos, all the time. They're always there, and every power has them. If you assume your data set is large enough that it includes top notch players in all power sets--not necessarily fair given top players skew toward the powers that fit their role best--the weapon damage part should be a fair comparison. The variation in damage should only be coming from differences in how the powers damage and how they interact with the basic combos. The fact that there's a baseline of ~3000 damage coming from weapons isn't that interesting because it's roughly the same amount for everyone.

The data in the graph was broken out that way because you can't get both the WM crit bonus and the AM damage at the same time. There is no easy third column to break out here for more complicated hybrids. Uses AM vs. doesn't use AM has a logical split because they're mutually exclusive. Nothing else is going to split up that cleanly. My guess is that even trying would waste a lot time trying to define how to weigh that hybrid, and then interpreting the results would be weighed down by all the complexity of that definition.

The interesting thing to me here would be having a drill-down of this data that breaks damage into the obvious categories: damage from weapon, damage from regular powers, damage from WM boosted powers, damage from AM mechanics, and maybe some other things like sidekicks and HT orbital strikes. It won't fit cleanly into this style of chart, but it would be very easy to interpret. Individual players are already doing this with things like the combat log analyzer toolset. It would be interesting to drill into that data for players who don't use the WM crit bonus or the AM regularly--basically to measure if either of these is effective compared to just doing the basic WM attack combos without even chasing the critical bonus. I wouldn't try to fit all that into one chart though.

My only point, which everyone may not agree, is that WM should be optional. When it was announced we were told that WM and AM were supposed to perform equally and that we would have the option of using one OR the other to do equal damage. The three columns I see are AM(doesn't use WM) vs WM(doesn't use AM) vs Hybrid (uses both).

I do agree that combo powers are the only true hybrids though, as we are the only ones that can get the crit buffs as well. That said, when WM prec damage is doing 10-20k damage in a crit, then we do not have the OPTION of using WM or not no matter what power we use.

Just spit-balling here, but I was thinking more about the potential hybrid approaches. Let's look at the graph again:



Assuming that similar data samples over time have reflected these same trends, as Spytle has said, and assuming all of these "Top DPS" players at least use either single mastery combos with clipping or dual mastery combos, the greatest imbalance appears to be with Rage and then Celestial. The others, while not perfect, are actually pretty close. So, why would that be? It's already been explained that the WM data are from players using strictly WM without AM, whereas the AM data may include pure AM (again note, this can include use of single or dual mastery combos without the might crit), as well as AM and WM+crit used together in a hybrid approach. How is the latter accomplished?

Let's look at the powersets:

Celestial, HL, and Rage can use WM+crit leading into the AM and some can even have an AM DoT (e.g., PcDL) running and still use WM+crit.

Earth and Sorcery cannot use WM+crit with the AM (pet) running.

Electricity and Nature cannot use WM+crit to lead into the AM (e.g., with Electroburst, Electrogenesis, or Voltaic Bolt) or during the AM (e.g., those DoTs and/or Electrocute running).

All powersets can use WM+crit or the AM separately, through Armories or mixed builds, when running content.

So, it appears that there's really not a good hybrid approach for Earth, Sorcery, Electricity, or Nature. They're all either/or. Rage can run a strong hybrid by using WM+crit on some of it's AM combos, like Outrage and Dreadful Blast. Celestial, because of it's weak might burst and lack of a DPS PI, doesn't really benefit from that approach, unless you go outside the powerset to an Iconic or Movement Mode ability. It does have very strong AM DoTs in Plague to Divine Light and it's inverse that can be running concurrently with WM+crit. I'm not going to speak to HL specifically, as I haven't played with it since the recent changes. Perhaps others could give some insight.

OK, don't hurt me, but what if leading into a Rage, Celestial, or HL AM combo with WM+crit negated the AM combo system and AM combo-related DoTs likewise negated WM+crit? *ducks* Wouldn't that potentially even out the more obvious disparities and facilitate further balancing? It would keep Rage from leading into it's strong combos with WM+crit, and prevent Celestial from performing WM+crit while it's AM DoTs are active. Not sure how HL would be affected, as I'm not that familiar with it. I have no doubt that additional balance changes would have to follow this, but it may be a place to start.

Thoughts?

You get points for bravery But what you're suggesting would utterly destroy hardlight unfortunately. Beefed up grasping hand and st hit for puny dmg as is and they're both single target, wminto power into combo is all they get and it isn't even that great to begin with. Rage standing out has more factors to consider, i joke around that rage's am should be ranmed to "crazy sc's and buffs", they poses an ability that tripples their dps for 12 seconds a pop, circuit breaker equivalent for range two stackable prec buffs(10% crit chance included) and their only viable ranged am move just so happens to be a great wm aoe finisher at the start, add to that that all of rage's staple powers have a 45% or 50% dmg modiffer - voila.

Thanks for not flaming, lol! Yeah, Celestial is in sort of the same boat as HL then. The might burst is pathetic. I don't even use it. I just stack precision, keep buffs and 50% modifiers up and use dry WM combos. I will say that Rage has access to it's "crazy SCs and buffs" with or without WM+crit. Not sure that's the reason for the disparity. Like I said, just throwing things out there. Thanks for the feedback.

I am Celestial ATM but... may I ask your rotation doing just weapon clip + pet?

Hey Remander I have a question, How is that Sorcery AM is stronger that Earth AM and Electric AM is stronger that Nature AM when both powers used the same mechanism sorry for the silly question, I've been out from DCUO for 2 moths and just came back from the game

Well, I think the Sorcery vs Earth disparity has to do with the Sorcery having better damage modifiers on it's burst abilities that are used with the pet up. As far as Electricity and Nature, if the labels on Nature are reversed, as many are claiming (it's the only one with WM to the left), then they actually aren't too far off. When you are that close (~100 or so DPS by my eyeballing), it could just come down to the player.

Make sense now, thank you very much for the explanation

I believe I have another proposition for the fix for this. Lets say I'm rage and use a WM combo, crit into dreadful blast, then continue the combo. How about instead of nullifying the combo, subtract the extra might damage gained via the crit bonus from the prec portion of the combo.

Just random numbers:
WM>Dreadful(normal hit 1k, crit 5k), combo, combo (10k prec)... in this instance your crit increases your might by 4k, therefore the 10k prec damage following in the AM combo will be reduced to 6k to nullify the crit burst.

I am not very sure how easy this would be to implement by the devs as crits can randomize, but I am sure there is some way based on based damage, stats, and the crit damage to know how much damage would have been performed without said crit. All would be needed then would be a sub-routine that would automatically subtract the extra damage from the combo portion of the AM.

I don't think that I'd possible because that would fall under live modifying of the time constant of the combo power which I don't think is doable. I think it would be easier to say reduce the might base damage of all powers that can combo because those three powers' AM is comboing not the might portions anyway. The point of those powers are that they are combo powers. You must combo to do good damage. That is how they have alway been and always been advertised. If you don't like comboing there are other powers for your playstyle. Not every power can work for everyones playstyles.

Oh I completely agree that combo'd powers are meant to be combo'd and I thoroughly enjoy it. That said, how can we kill the might portion without running into the same issue that Celestial has. With celestial you do not have the option of AM or WM+Burst because the burst is pathetically low.

I do agree though that my proposed idea may be an impossible issue, and it would probably cause more problems than fix them. I was merely trying to voice an option that doesn't void combos completely, or give these powers an unfair advantage at the hybrid build.

Maybe there are other avenues we could explore though, but currently I would guess voiding the combo completely when you crit with WM is the best choice. If this were the chosen avenue though, I would suggest that Celestial and HL(if they are in the same shape) have the might portion of their combos buffed up(even if we take from the backloaded damage a little) in order to make a WM+Burst setup viable for them.

At the same time, I still see the best route to fix the current AM vs WM vs Hybrid (of course once we get viable data for each category) would be to Buff AM, Buff Might Crit Damage, Nerf WM Prec Damage. When we see the data showing that a pure AM is doing significantly less than the hybrid or WM+burst, something will need to be done to level them off.

We cannot just buff AM or hybrid goes up, so to reduce the increase of the hybrid we nerf the prec damage on WM. Now WM+burst is falling behind, so we buff the might crit damage and we are back to an even playing field. This along with nullifying combos when a WM+Burst is performed I believe is the optimum way to get all three columns balanced and provide a choice to everyone to play their power however they see fit(AM, WM, Hybrid).

For Celestial if the cooldown on normal Divine is lowered it would be fine. Both normal DL and Blight are very good burst options for Celestial might wise. Honestly Celestials might side would be fine as is because it is already low. As is HLs so Rage would be the only one needing a slight nerf in might damage on Outrage and DB only really.