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

If blight were ranged maybe. That and I agree DL would need a much shorter CD(in line with Plague at least). Honestly though, I would choose Remander's option of nullifying combos and buffing the might to be on par with any other power. We are combo powers so yes we should combo, but sorc is a pet power so should it be required to use the pet?

Everyone should have the option of WM+Burst OR AM, and should be viable with either method. Another option which may be pushed down for Celestial would be a PI to buff that might damage up, but not sure many would like that option.

A PI is a possible route and we already have one so it shouldnt be hard to implement. A lot of powers purify already so adding "deals more damage to purified enemies" would be easy.

That's an interesting idea, though I agree with Shad0wReap3r that it would put Rage in the same position as Celestial and HL. I guess the real question is whether that's how it should be anyway?

I would like your idea of nullifying combos when using WM more than nerfing rage's might damage. I would prefer the two options of dealing damage (AM...combos... WM...burst..) to keep it in line with every other power/AM.

The only other option I can think of would alter rage/HL PIs quite a bit. This would be something along the lines of giving all 3 a PI that is WM related instead of AM related. This PI would boost might damage, so you can get those big crits, but the PI would drop as soon as you went into a combo. Yes you could reapply the PI between each combo and always get the boosted might, but it would not be worth it to do AND combo.

This would result in us having a PI that can stay active while using WM and provide us with a boosted might for those WM crits, but would be unsustainable using combos therefore making WM useless on any powers except the first one in a rotation. Not sure if this would be a complete FIX, but it would give us both options and prevent WM+crit+combo hybrids.

I cannot edit, but this would also include a nerf to might damage in rage when the WM PI is not active. Also, this could possibly be a separate PI from the ones used for the AMs. The AM PI's could then disable WM crits.

(Had to use chrome to edit)

is it just me or does all this balancing WM and AM seem overly complicated just for the sake of being complicated?

The DPS role is one of four roles available in the game....yet WM and AM balancing is focused primarily on the DPS role.

It sure seems like an awful lot of time is spent,maybe even wasted on this.......update after update,hotfix after hotfix,revamp after revamp spend balancing the dps side of things.

Is this not time that could be spent developing more indepth and immersing content? perhaps even adding more depth to the current support roles so they arent shunned from groups like a leper.

Is it too much to ask to just completely scrap WM......buff and balance the AM,reduce power costs and keep it nice and simple?

Why this endless cycle of nerfing everything only to come back later and try to buff them all over again by adding certain convoluted mechanics that are not only unnecessary but grossly contrary to the theme of a super hero power based action mmo?

I would love this, WM has made DPSing so bland and boring.... But, I think the devs have too much pride to admit that WM was a bad idea and just focus on AMs. That, and believe it or not, some people actually like weapon mastery.

Also, if you watched the dcuo panel (hindsight is 20/20) they defend weapon mastery to no end and say it doesn't do more DPS than awesome mechanics.

They defend it and parse their data and definition of what is WM to suit their end.

i dont think its enough to simply say WM=WM combo+ might crit.
once u buy WM even without purchasing a combo you get a huge dmg buff to regular attacks.

when you compare full WM combos plus the crit it far overshadows the AM of every powerset. if you even dare to factor in the extra dmg to regular combos provided by WM the gap is even wider.

It seems to me it would have been far easier to balance all the powersets Am against each other than to try to balance them against each other+WM.

And we arent even close to having all the powersets balanced yet.

how much closer would we be to that end had not all this time been used in the design,implementation and constant tweaking of WM??

exactly, the devs made their jobs even harder by introducing weapon mastery to the equation. Without WM, they just would have had to balance out AMs within all the powers. Now it's a need to balance weapon mastery and awesome mechanics within all the powers.

I LIKE WM... I think it was a great addition to the game because it gives players... OPTIONS. Options are a good thing, but not only that, but part of WM was to give players with high SPs something to invest those into as so many players were complaining about lack of SP sink.

In further regards to WM... what's the point of having weapons if you never use them; lets keep the strain on controllers, right? At least now, thanks to WM, players can regen their own power back thus making controllers no longer 'power batteries'. Before WM, most players were doing nothing but clipping powers, yet that isn't boring, but WM spamming is?!? Also, before WM, those who didn't or couldn't clip, couldn't compete with those who did... now thanks to WM and further with AM... players now have a variety of options on how to play and still remain competitive.

We should all keep in mind that this is a lengthy, 'work in progress' that needed to happen to bring some sort of balance between the powers. Many players left the game because they couldn't come close to the damage output certain powersets were doing; I even walked away for two months this year, but came back because of their work to bring about balance- at least it showed they realized there was a problem and sought a way of addressing it.

As an aside, HL not fun right now

Personally I never cared for HL.

It's a tradesecret not that har to figgure out tho

What i mean by my previous post is- rage can beef up and capitalise on Wm almost like no other set, I am sure if the pares would be represented as timeline across the whole fight where it comes to rage we'd see avarag but still good parses followed by huge dps spikes for the periods of time they use berserk or infuriate or berserk and infuriate, when You average it out across a whole longish span of a t6 boss fight, the huge spikes are enough to make the difference we see but not enough to make rage crazy op because their max dmg potential has a wide range depending on how much they're beefed up at that period of time.

Curious about something here. Recent testing got me thinking about it. Shiny Mackerel's parser has difficulty with damaging auras that are placed on targets. The damage against other targets is actually attributed to the target with the aura, rather than the player who cast the aura. This was first identified back when we were testing Electricity's new AM. Often Electrogenesis, and sometimes Voltaic Bolt, were being counted in the NPC damage out. Shiny made adjustments to compensate, but they've had to be done on a case by case basis. The most recent one identified was the aura from corrupted Retribution. I wonder how the scoreboard parser assigns data to the player's damage out column. Is it able to capture this aura-type damage? If not, the data may not be entirely accurate, and since you're using that to balance, it should be considered. Of course, your parser may already pick that up. Thought I'd bring it up, just in case.

I'd love to see what the current values look like. I'm very curious whether the powers that seem more powerful for damage are showing up as such in the developers' data. It'd be great to see how well things are currently balanced and what powers need more attention to catch up.

Wow, this thread definitely was necro'd.

That aside, WOW. I left the game, and THIS is the stuff I miss? Where were these conversations during T4-T5? This is amazing stuff.

The thread is still relevant. If anything, it is more relevant than it was previously since more of the AMs have been released. I'm truly interested where things fall in a similar chart with all the powers involved. With Celestial around the corner next week, and Rage probably a few weeks to a month after that, maybe we'll see some data in a couple months (wishful thinking, I know).

I've been thinking the same thing, Seth. Would be a good time to have a progress update. I suspect it looks a bit better now, actually.

Also interested in whether they are tracking pure AM, pure WM, and hybrid separately now.

Appropriately necro'd thread is appropriate. I'd be be very interested to see a more current version of this chart (and hopefully a more accurate one this time).