I did not notice the sound effect because my volume was turned down but BumblingB is right I do hear a high pitched futuristic mechanical-like sound. It will be easy to miss with voice and other sound effects going on though. There is also a very quick red flash around you. It is quick enough that the average player will miss it unless they are specifically looking for it and know to look for it. Slowing it down a bit and making bulkier I think would help with the messaging.
Have not read the rest of the thread, so I am sorry if someone said this already, but the 20 points to unlock WM should be moved down to at least 17, so that way one is not required to waste SP on stuff not inside your role.
Also hidden away in the tooltips I noticed when you unlock Weapon Mastery you get a Critical Weapon Attack Damage buff of +20% and a Control Resistance buff of +25%. This applies to all weapons including ranged weapons. This is also +5% Critical Weapon Attack Damage and +5% Control Resistance compared to the normal melee weapon buff. That is a nice slightly hidden change and adds the normal melee buff to ranged weapons (which was asked for by some posters).
A) Every innate is useful for each role in some way and b) you only need to fully spec out 3 tier 1 innate stacks, 1 tier 2 innate stack +1 to get Weapon Mastery unlocked. Looking at the tier 1 and tier 2 innates this means role focused path skills (4), 1 tier 1 stack (3), 1 role focused tier 2 stack (6), tier 1 Health/Defense (3), tier 1 secondary role innate (3) (Usually Dominance or Restoration depending on the role) and 1 point in a combo or innate of choice. That unlocks the Weapon Mastery trait. Except for 1 point all of the above is useful to your role and survivability. If you are using a weapon for Weapon Mastery combos you will need to invest in standard combos as well so those last few points would be used for standard combos instead of the innates. You may personally think that everything I mentioned is not useful to you but that doesn't change that fact that it is and your skill points are largely not being wasted from an overall progression viewpoint.
It's definitely buffing the might damage of most abilities I've tested tonight. I'm seeing crits 2.5-3x higher than a non-WM "proc" on most powers. I do see increased damage on certain powers (like the initial hit from Wintry Tempest or Bitter Winds, for example) but not pure DOTs like Plasma Retch. There is also no benefit to cast time powers like Frost Blast. Channels and AOE fields are kinda wonky atm. I see the bonus on the first tick every time but the numbers after that seem to be irregular. Sometimes it seems like the first couple of ticks are buffed (the first 4 snowballs while channeling Avalanche, for example) but sometimes only the first tick is buffed. I've seen WT do the same thing. It would have 4 big ticks then the rest would be normal. The longer I was online (and the more times I used respec tokens to test other powers) the more unreliable the damage became. I plan on spending a lot more time testing Ice tomorrow night without respeccing powers. Maybe switching around so much caused something to go awry.
So I noticed something... I filled out the 1h and DW trees. Got the Stunning Swipe and Dual Flurry masteries so I can combo from 1h to DW. Now when I switch weapons to DW and then use the standard Stunning Swipe (tap tap tap hold), there's a cast bar, which means you can't clip it. But strangely, when I use (standard) Dual Flurry (6 tap hold), there's no cast bar and I can clip it like "normal" (Live). I think you should be able to clip the first part of the WM combos without losing the damage. What if I have the appropriate WM skills filled out, but want to use Spin Chop like the old days, where I can clip it? As it currently stands, that's not possible- you would have to respec just so you can skip filling out the corresponding WM bubbles. And if I'm understanding this WM thing right, the cast bar should only be on the second part of the WM combo to encourage not-clipping for the *lousy* crit bonus. Hope that all made sense. By the way, comboing from 1h to DW feels incredibly smooth. I like it.
Imo The WM combos i've tested are to slow, For example take 1hd focus blast - Hb's solar flame. The time it takes to do the hb's part is so slow cause you have to wait out the whole animation then on top of that theres a delay from the time the animation ends to the time it hits. So right now theres really no benefit from the combos i have tried cause of the loss in speed. Not to mention the WM combos are quite awkward being that slow. There is very good potential here and i like what i see but i just hope we can speed them up a bit on the last part and make it so we can clip them some and get rid of the delay.
I liked many of the combos so far, but the shield moves stood out to me as odd. It makes all the sense in the world to combo shield into 1h. Our toons hold the shield in their left hand and 1h in the right. Both weapons have several moves that go left-to-right and right-to-left. There are so many possibilities to have one combo into the other. Instead it's going into 2 trees that use both hands... 2h & dual pistols? I'm liking this overall though. Looking forward to more testing!
I posted this in of the Gotham City threads regarding the tier 1 innate changes. I think the loss of Might & Precision will get some negative backlash if this goes live.
Static numbers don't hold up in the long run as our gear goes up and up. To be honest, I would have preferred something like +1% precision and +2% might. But eh.
My two cents (opinion, not the word of god): 20 sp is too high a cost. Weapon "Mastery" to me would make sense as all the actual weapon attacks (7-8 sp) then one 3/3 tier passives and one 6/6 tier passives (9 sp) so 14-15 sp. You've mastered all the attacks fully mastered both row one and two of innates. The discrepancy between weapons with 3 and 4 non base attacks is... lets say disconcerting...it just looks wierd. It's like you just tossing in a skill point somewhere. You know all the moves, have learned how to hit harder, be more damaging, or just really specialized as far as you can go in a weapon, but damn +7 health, that's how you know you've mastered dual wield. Hitting the red on a power after the combo, a little tricky. Amusingly it reminds me of clipping. As a prec based celestial, I don't know that it will be worthwhile for me to use it as compared to my previous rotation. However, I think it will allow me to dps with other celestial dps without worrying about overwriting. Purely on how I play the game, it feels more engaging, much the same way as celestial dps felt more engaging because of combos as compared to sorcery. Lastly the right range hold (h1), right range hold(h2), right range hold(h3) on HB can be chained from h1->h2->h3->h2->h3 continutously skipping the first attack, which I assume is unintentional.
The same can be done with Martial Art's Weapon Mastery combos and Shield's standard combos (I do not recall if they carry over to the Weapon Mastery combo or not). Shield's standard combos have been around since its release so I doubt it is unintentional.
I also think that the +25 might should be bumped up a little cause of the way prec and might scale. Cause rite now it's favoring a prec and I thought we were going for balance?
I feel lied to. We were told that WM would not replace clipping. But putting a point into Weapon Mastery puts a cast bar on combos that NEVER had a cast bar before. Cartwheel Kick, Spinning Punch, Solar Flame, Dual Flurry all have cast bars once you activate WM meaning you CAN'T CLIP those attacks or you lose ALL the weapon damage. I can understand why the NEW combos would have cast bars because that's the point of the WM mechanic, but WHY would you add cast bars to OLD combos as well? Not to mention you HAVE to put a point into WM if you want to access the new bottom row of innates. This is truly shocking to me. Please tell me this is just a bug that will be REMOVED.
Well Precision & Might mods are very close (off by a single point) right now. So I am betting they aimed to match them.
You can still clip them but you lose the second hit from the Weapon Mastery part. At least this was the case for the combos I tested. I also recall Spytle saying this on the livestream so I am betting this is unintentional.
Yes, but as a DPS, I would rather not be forced to waste SP on a health or resto buff, when i could use those Sp to get more DPS innate in other trees.
While I can't speak to clipping or stats yet since it's too early, the first thing I noticed right off the bat was the one thing I was afraid of which is that our chosen weapon styles immediately disappear or change upon execution of the combo attacks. Now I don't know if this is something that just hasn't been changed yet, but it's certainly use some tweaking.
From a progression viewpoint you need Health (and your Healers will thank you) and you could easily get Vitalization & Power to help your Controllers with Power regeneration instead of Restoration. From a less personal and more general viewpoint requiring a higher amount of skill points ensures a more rounded player and your group members will thank you for any help you can give them to keep you alive or sustained (speaking from someone who sees the game from those roles).
