Stats Revamp 1.7

Any word on when the 1.8 phase should be starting?

It hits Live Servers soon™.

. Sorry Fatal...couldn't resist. lol.

My testing peeps.......i agree to dont rush this out but I don't what the concern is lately.....the devs clearly stated the 3 styles of play and out of tje 3 styles HYBRID will be the best....hybrid been in game since beta so why is this a suprise.....i love hybrid but I think for combos pfft is the way to go because I can't find a rotation that makes since on test for weapon use.....then guys on live we have seen a whole lot of factors that are affect dps......
Pickups for one.....
you or another person might be picking up teammates while.the scoreboard chaser who still is blasting away while a fallen teammate is at their feet and you gotta come way across the room to pickup....thats sad and affects numbers

the mechanics of the game......like in gentleman ghost where I stand by cone to activate it but nobody else does because they still keep blasting away.....no help but while you looking out for the team your dps numbers start to lack

controllers......in this revamp.you need 2 trolls which I love but they still don't dump power just because you devs have given them the ability to bit any power...bam instant POT....that is NOT controlling.....it was fun to control pre sox but now.....you got DUMMIES coming on test with this solo bs again like live....you can't test loadout rotation without 2 controllers....i blame you devs for not promoting teammplay....so many wont control because of the solo crap live.....you don't make 2 a requirement this revamp gonna be for nothing....same for healing too.....it is annoying to hear someone say on TEST oh why we need 2 trollers.....are you FREAKING serious dude.....you cannot dps like you want and should unless 2 trollers got your back like preDOX......

dps balance I understand get it close but their will never be exact balanced....that is why skill points matter right.....a 284sp dps is suppose to hit harder then a 269sp dps.....so why are we looking for balance.....you got it close so what is the problem......oh the problem is you letting that solo crap leak onto test while testers like crappy trex fatal ala and myself struggle to test proper dps loadout but can't find decent controllers in sight......fix the team aspect of the game.....all this will be for nothing live if the fools dont play the game right......

you will never have balance like that.... pick a style and master it....dont rush this out though.....pfft is for the lazy but seems to work better for combos.....hybrid is for the skilled but sucks for combos.....why not just say if you use a combo power PFFT is the better dps for that power and if you using a non combo power then HYBRID is the best dps for that power.......honestly WM just should vanish all together.....its soooooo boring....

so I say 2 choices....

HYBRID=best dps for NON combo powers
PFFT=best dps for combo powers

Hmm

I am still amazed there are no guide lines for testing this revamp. Remember the tunso test? Remember we were all testing for a year and then all of sudden its u guys have all been testing wrong. And why were we testing wrong? Because we werent told about the tunso test and it was the guide line to test with.

I really hope you got some support flexibility cooking up in that pot you call 1.8

Between the costs and the damage reduction on hybrid abilities, support roles are forced to play one way for the most part besides tanks, who are the only role that can get away with changing things up without impacting the success of the raid (well, maybe not fire and rage those still need a little work).

Battle heals? Good luck. Power costs would most likely keep you from straying away from either split modding resto/power or speccing into crit attack so you can get some sort of damage out. Not to mention hybrid abilities that both heal and do damage are in the junkyard category as far as relying on them to battle heal, damage is insignificant, stupid guideline that shouldn't even be in place and that goes for the DPS side of things as well. A power should still keep its full damage while having support capabilities to it. It's part of what distinguishes dps powers between one another.

Battle trolling? HA! Straying away from just being an instant power spammer? Yeah ok, better get a raid with nothing but weapon dps if you want to even attempt to spice things up a little. Not to mention trolls get the same damage reduction healers do with hybrid abilities that do both damage and CC/debuff.

What this says is for battle roles or people that want to go the extra mile in support to even have a shot at doing it, they would have to put powers on their load out that have absolutely nothing to do with their role which in the long run could jeopardize the raid. DPS get the enjoyment of freedom between playstyles while support ae forced to play one way as usual because they have very little flexibility for anything else.

Fix this please, more I think about it, more it irritates me. Also for the people that don't like battle support, good for you. I'm not looking to discuss or debate whether it should be a thing or not, I simply want it to be more accessible to those that are willing to put in the extra work.

Posting this here instead of the Light thread so as to not derail it. The issue applies to the game as a whole, not just one specific power.

Disclaimer: I tend to play melee DPS in MMOs though I have recently started learning Shadow Priest to get a taste of the ranged life. None of what I post below is meant to make my preferred style any better than another.

You bring up an encounter design issue and it's a big one. It has been a problem for a LONG time in this game, so long that it has caused a lot of players (and previous devs) to believe that melee should do far more damage than ranged due to "risk/reward." This belief is still prevalent in the testing threads where people have stated that their damage targets for melee are 10k above ranged. That, to be blunt, is a load of ****.

There is absolutely zero reason why a ranged specialist should do 25-30% less damage than a melee specialist. None. Both styles should have the same potential on static single targets using an ideal rotation. However, people have been conditioned to believe melee should have a higher potential because it is riskier to be up close and personal with bosses therefore they should be rewarded with bigger numbers for surviving. They have been conditioned to believe playing from range should produce smaller numbers because the player is able to turret with little danger from boss mechanics.

They are partially correct. Melee is riskier to play and ranged is pretty safe in most content in this game. There have been exceptions such as the Raven bounty that penalized staying at range but these encounters are few in number in DCUO. Melee play in most boss encounters in this entire game is dangerous. Bosses have a TON of PBAOE attacks that KO players who mess up near them while there are very few mechanics that force ranged players to stop pressing buttons. This paradigm does penalize melee players and creates an environment where the safe bet produces better numbers.

The answer to this issue from both the dev team and the community thus far has been to buff melee. This is crap. The answer is not to design a huge damage disparity between play styles into the game. The answer is to design boss encounters so that some favor melee and some favor ranged so that, at the end of a run, both styles can produce similar overall numbers on bosses. Raids should be encouraged to bring a diverse group in order to maximize raid damage. Armories also exist so that, unlike games like WoW, individual players can switch between melee and ranged builds to suit the encounter design.

The revamp is solving some of this just by reducing the number of one-shots in the game. Melee will be made less punishing just from that change if it actually works in content. I hope the dev team takes this philosophy all the way and creates a level playing field for both ranged and melee players by designing a variety of encounters that let both styles shine on different encounters rather than sticking with the status quo and baking in imbalance by giving melee a greater potential.

Please note that the above completely ignores the ridiculous notion that hallway trash damage means a damn thing to anyone other than number chasing noobs.

July 7th Hotfix - Power:

What on earth is going on with power scaling? At CR 201, my power pool is 44349, fully modded and 60 points spent on crits, and 161 on restoration, the rest in a weapon tree. My power costs are 3123 (100), 6246 (200), 7807 (250), 9369 (300) and 14053 (450).

Meanwhile at CR 88, full T4 vendor gear, 90 SP spent max on stats, 60 on crits, 30 in resto, my power pool is 13219. My power costs are 444 (100), 889 (200), 1112 (250), 1335 (300) and 2002 (450). Even with mods in gear (T4 Mods) these power costs did not change.

Cost - T4 Vendor Gear / T8 Vendor Gear

100 - (444/13219 = 3.35% Cost) / (3213/44349 = 7.24% Cost)
200 - 6.73% Cost / 14.08% Cost
250 - 8.41% Cost / 17.60% Cost
300 - 10.09% Cost / 21.19% Cost
450 - 15.14% Cost / 31.69% Cost

Uhh, why are my powers costing more than double in comparison to my total power pool with 0 SP in my power stat? Also, why doesn't it seem like power regeneration is scaling with our power pool? In the T5 Alert I'm running below you'll see that the power regeneration is basically over powering what I'm spending, we're running the alert without a troll and no one is having any issues with power. Yet come end game it's basically like we're acting like we're at the end of our oil reserves. (T4 or T8 I'm using the Power Mastery, the increased innate regeneration)

This needs to be looked into if you're already not, this is deceiving to newer players especially since what works for them early won't work later on and this will deter players much like it's deterring the majority of test. No one can get any sort of raid group going in a timely fashion because no one wants to troll for these ridiculous costs especially when the power dumping / power over time is barely scratching the recovery of power, even if you are trolling there's no reward, it's a bottomless pit of constant recharge of peoples power bar for basically nothing.

T5 Alert - Family Reunion, we used a tank for the first boss and then 3 manned it later on, no last boss footage, mute the clips:









And the T8 Raid, Ultimate Solider at first boss, Charms is the Celestial Healer, look at how erratic her power bar is with 2 controllers:



It may not be a fair comparison, an alert to a raid but the fact that the 0 controller alert run was no where near close in power consumption to the 2 controller raid run suggests that there is something very wrong with power regeneration / scaling / pools and the higher you go the worse it gets.

Also here's a video of the comparison of my gear and stats. I looked how quickly i could empty my power bar using the priority heal, with CR88 gear it was about 22s and CR201 gear it was about 6s, 9s once i let it regen for one last cast.

What's going on here is that stats matter and skill points and mods are expected to be a thing. At T8 you're expected to have more skill points, better mods, and all your generator mods.

Oh where do I spec into power as a healer then? Oh wait, I shouldn't have to says Avair? Ah, nice.

So I guess my only options are mods then huh? Ok, speccing full resto and power mods my total power pool is 55734, let's do some of those calculations again;

Cost - T4 Vendor Gear / T8 Vendor Gear / T8 Vendor Gear with Resto and Power Mods

100 - (444/13219 = 3.35% Cost) / (3213/44349 = 7.24% Cost) / (3213/55734 = 5.76% Cost)
200 - 6.73% Cost / 14.08% Cost / 11.21% Cost
250 - 8.41% Cost / 17.60% Cost / 14.01% Cost
300 - 10.09% Cost / 21.19% Cost / 16.81% Cost
450 - 15.14% Cost / 31.69% Cost / 25.2% Cost

Hmm, even with the power mods in doesn't look like I'm anywhere close to my T4 Power Efficiency does it?

Do you know how many 300 and 250 power cost abilities are STAPLES in healer stance? We don't have the flexibility in choices of powers like the DPS role does, we can't pick lower costing abilities because they aren't the main mechanic of healing with the power set.

With full T8 Vendor Gear with resto and power I can cast a 300 cost ability 5.94 > 5 times before I have 0 power, a 250 cost ability 7.13 > 7 times. At T4, 300 cost abilities 9.9 > 9 times, 250 cost abilities 11.89 > 11 times. This doesn't take into account the power regeneration mechanic which if you look at my videos above is much more powerful at T4 than it is at T8.

So, I can cast nearly double the amount of abilities at T4, power regeneration is at a point where no one needs a troll and therefore no one will learn the role meaning a shortage of the role at higher tiers. But I guess more SP and more mods in the power stat will fix things eh?

Well... that got you a bit closer. Seems that you're right and something's definitely out of whack with power scaling.

Requoting this paragraph for emphasis

An example of what ice can do as a tank:



Granted shield was a terrible choice and I probably would have done more as staff or MA, the damage was still pretty high for a tank. I was specced full crit attack, 90 points into precision, 91 points into dom, specced weapon mastery and even had weapon buff on loadout, modded full dom/precision while drinking precision cola, and still was fine for the most (besides that one death on second boss). Had I tried that as healing or trolling it would have most likely jeopardized the run. All support roles should have that flexibility and freedom to stray off from the norm without costing the raid.

The thing is that it is expected from everyone to have the newest generator mods for power. What if one would want health generator mods? Well, it screws you hard i would say. And your troller will have a hard time... Also: the calculation demands a certain amount of your skillpoints spent into might/power... So, if you are not focusing on that stat, say, if you are doing anything else than a might/power concentrated stats layout, well... Your troller will have a hard time. Now if you have neither generator mods nor enough sp spend in the right stat, you will have problems.

This is an issue. This absolutely must get looked at. It just cant be that the calculation demands newest generator mods and sp spend for might/power.

I'm L T and I approve this message.

Yup, I'm still very much against basing the formula off what power should look like fully modded in both gear and generator sockets. First, it all but forces some powersets and roles to spec straight power in their generator (again, what if you want to put some health in that slot?). Second, gear and generator mods are extremely resource-intensive at endgame. Specifically generator mods, of which I've made four and I'm 202/201 DPS/troll having spammed the hell out of content. Popping in mods should be a boost to the status quo for power, not a requirement. The formula should consider only what the power in the gear at a particular CR would give, and what the power level from skill point speccing is at that level of progression. Power is still a big issue on test across all roles, and that's with the availability of free generator and equipment mods. This paradigm will be brutal on live.

I couldn't agree more to this. The way they have set it up at the moment is that u pretty much have to put power in everywhere. And then u still run out of power after 6 skills. The grind for the generator mods is beyond the point of rediculous on live. 30 time warp essence for 1 generator mod...
trolls are made pure batteries again even tho they wanted to stray away from the battery aspect... and look in what kind of spot trolls are now. Just go on live and see how many people are actually modded. If i say 70% that will be generous. Power shouldn't be scaling to CR like this. If we want extra power it should be because we want it (trolls for example) not because otherwise u would perform bad. And now sinds they killed power overal in general by adding it to might it screws over the support roles.

We are 8 iterations into this and power consumption is still designed around max potential. That just is ridiculous. We should not be including mods at all. Those should be addition to, not required of.

Please rethink consumption to linear solely based on gear. As it is, its still better to NOT progress your character.

Though I agree that scaling should be looked at, I think power needs to be important. I could easily see some of the suggestions here leading to us going from "we should find a second troll" to "I have full power generator mods so we don't need a troll"

From celestial's post above, it kind of seems like t4 power requirements are too low rather than T8 being too high