Work In Progress Work In Progress: Weapon Mastery

i wonder if we can look forward to a mechanic that does something similarly interesting and cool for tray power abilities

A few thoughts just off the top of my head after watching:

-Hopefully it's early enough in this feature's lifecycle to consider adding one additional hitch to the system - the ability to get effects other than damage from your correctly-timed combos. More damage is always good when things are going smoothly - but there also might be times that you want extra power as a Controller, extra Healing as a Healer or extra Defense as a Tank.

-It seems that while Shield can combo into other Weapons, no other Weapon can combo into Shield (that's from checking out the spreadsheet in the video). Is this because Shield is directly tied to DLC4? If so, perhaps you could consider being able to combo into Shield some sort of 'Bonus' or 'Wildcard' as an extra benefit for those who do own The Last Laugh.

Sounds great, so far. I thought that the Martial Arts Knee-Thrust Thingee into the Dual Pistols' attack looked especially smooth.

this looks like it's more tailored towards the DPS role, while I agree that other roles can participate it is not contributing in the bigger picture. why not make it so the masteries go off of the role that you are using or the way you are speccing, for example if you are a tank you will get bonuses for that role and according to what you spec into.
obviously sp will matter more, but for the most part as a tank in endgame you spend more time blocking not because you can but because you have to, offense and using weapon will not mitigate dmg, blocking will.

the idea itself looks cool as it does give other options for DPS and ways to keep the combat going if you're out of power for example, but tailoring it to each role would have been much more rewarding, because in the end even all the clipping powersets run out of power and they can still use this new system and since those sets are already heavy on the precision side.... my 2 cents, balance it out between might and prec because at the end might=power and prec=0 power when it comes to this

Press the "T" key real quick. Yup, you're a DPS now. Grats.

You do realize this is going to make a split in the community if you put a new row of innates, that were explained to be "amazing" in stats?

The second row of innates added were very minor, which is why you could get away with it. This is just going to cause more stress on new players (also casuals & alt players - even with feat unlocks in place), cause a split in the community, and SP standards will be set like never before.

This could well be the best thing ever. I really hope it will make all weapons viable for damage again and give all powersets precision or mix-based potential.

Can Tunso expand on how removing/modifying jump canceling could affect powers that use it extensively, like Gadgets, HL & Rage? (there was a mention of this in the Live Stream).

Also, as long as this system keeps the game fast, count me in. The reason many players loved clipping is because it speed up the game. This system sounds like it could slow down things, which some players might not be down for.

Lastly, "ranged Charge Up Attacks are being removed from the game"... how does this affect moves like Fireburst or Mass Levitation, if at all? If this only affects weapon attacks like DW charged attack, how could this affect those weapons? Will players be forced to sit through the whole animation? or will we still be able to clip (as funky as how it looks) and still get the damage as we do today?

I'm still intrigued on the possibilities, but changing animation times all across the board is definitely a game changer.

Melee gets a bonus for crit and anti CC is this going to carry over for the weapon mastery system and if it does will range get some sort of bonus because as it stands the melee bonus is huge compared to range and giving melee the ability to range will out weigh the range to melee combos since melee gets a better bonus?

I'll have to rewatch the stream. I thought the new row opened the combos once you get the required weapon mastery.

That's the question I had before we even got details. Now that we have details, it seems like the mechanic will completely change the game. Don't see how they will make it an optional purchase.

cant wait to use berserk after that

Amazing system. Now everyone can have fun that green and yellow lanterns had!
Adds more variety to the players who want to have fun in this game. After very long break i'm coming back for DLC 10 - something really new and interesting.
Thank you for this addition, great job!

Tunso, in the stream you mentioned normalizing the tray power animation times. Does this mean moves with cast times will fall under this as well? For example resonating gale and Mass Detonation are very similar moves however, Mass detonation has a 3-4 sec cast but hits for huge numbers providing a 60% mod as well while Resonating Gale has an approximately 1 sec cast and hits for moderate numbers and provides a 50% mod. Does this new universal animation time of 1.2 seconds mean that they will be the same or does this only go for moves that do not have cast times?

Weapon holds like haymaker should not have cast bars, as many know if you try to clip something with a cast bar you don't get the damage for whatever you clipped, the only thing that should have a cast bar is the end of the weapon mastery combo, this way clippers can still play like they always have and people can still enjoy the new mechanic.

Like if you agree.

What?!? Care to explain how DPS will be using more power? You have to go through the whole animation to get the damage so I'm not sure how it's more power hungry.

Watched the work in progress livestream on weapon mastery.

I was thinking at least for melee combos or close range fighting how useful are prolonged animations, seeing as it is hard enough to get some full combos off already?
Clipping is just as much about getting rotation off faster because npcs will interrupt you.
Getting say smokebomb off is hard enough already without adding additional time to your attack.

So how useful is it for say tanks having to be vulnerable for additional time? Us fire tanks don't like to stay out of block for long for example.

It also seems overly dps based. To be fair, should the combos for non dps'ers not increase healing, power out or defense/health instead?

Healers, controllers and tanks just don't have the same time on their hands to go into weapon combos and their class is getting no benefit.
Would it make sense to give dps'ers a combo to increase their healing?

If you out there as a controller you want to put more power out this will actually get in the way demanding more time away from instant power.

Please consider giving the other classes some kind of benefit to doing combos that is class specific.

this is awesome it will allow game pad users to do the same dps as macro users! best dlc and i will buy!

It did. There is additional row that has yet to be implemented that will give us much needed better innates.

See...I don't see this being used very well in the current state of the game. After 3 taps we get countered so actually pulling off some of these combos are rarely going to happen.

I like it. Very nice idea that will help support roles to put out more damage.

However, in order to help the "blue bar" healers to really enjoy trolling and not just spaming instant power, ¿how about making the weapon mastery have a really nice buff? That way we have two ways: clipping is fast damage but not much crits and weapon mastery is slow damage with lots of crits. So it comes to a matter of situation, when you need to kill fast even if you waste power (when the trolls are crazy high vit guys) or need to be conservativ with the power while being slow but being secure (just 1 troll in the raid). I think if this happens, we do have 2 systems that work in different ways. And even in a regular situation, both ways are competitive in damage because one is fast and the other has cirts and buffs.

Other thing in my mind is that the power buff at the end of the combo should affect the healing or power restoring ability, so support roles can really use the combos to improve their work in raids. Why? Simply. Lets face it. In a raid as a controller you clip ALL power and combo with a instant transfer power. So if doing the weapon mastery combo can help me with a big crit or vitalization boost... of course i will go for it! Same for healers and tanks, with resto boost and defense or dominance buff.

And in a pvp topic. The weapon mastery combo should be vulnerable to counter because you guys want ability and timing as the key factor. Time your block/lunge correctly and punish the dude in pvp. Same as goes now with hard light powers. All fancy combos but one wrong movement and you get punish.

Other than that, i like the option to customize the look of every weapon.