Work In Progress Work In Progress: Weapon Mastery

I saw the part where he answered the question asking if this would help healers crit, he said no, I got mad, every new mechanic is only to really benefit dps, I mean, look at the movement debuffs...

Fundamental issues with this:

First off, this shows the complete lack of being able to balance the powers. This is an attempt to get everyone doing these combos, which in turn makes everyone do the exact same DPS.

1. Issue one - In pvp all of these will be blocked. It is more optimal to use 1 weapon and time your block breaks, than it would be to use these just to get blocked. They are too slow, and only work from range if you are being ignored.

2. High end content does not allow for melee range combos - thus, only the range combos are worth anything. Nature, and every other long duration DOT powers will have a massive OP advantage. Nature can simply cast harvest every 2 combos from range, and restack their DOTs, while other powersets will have to re-cast everything.

3. Jump canceling being nerfed effectively made hard light useless. The main weapon with hard light is the rifle, and removing that clip, neutered the class.

4. Can a tank combo into blocking? I can't wait to see a fire tank try to use a combo on a boss.

OMFG, you're fixing it. You're actually fixing it. Praise be to Jebus. One hundred thousand internets to you good sirs. And not only fixing it, but making it even better by adding weapon mixing. I can throw money at this. It will be done.

Making DPS slow down on power consumption does sound like it will help trolls. Plus we haven't seen what this might do for combo building. If I can regen power from a WM combo instead of just spamming pulse beam...#HappyPanda.

Pointless for tanks as they have to block most of the time due to hard hitting bosses. They would most likely be dead before they finish their combo. Healer/Trolls can make excellent use of this though.

Or just something like: Whichever power you use after the Master Combo, it has a 100% Crit Chance. If you use an attack power, you do more damage; if you use a Healing Power, you get bigger heals, etc.

They already have powers divided up into 'Beneficial', 'Utility', and 'Damage'. It shouldn't be too hard to connect the dots.

I totally agree. Try to find a troll today on EU-PS. Nearly impossible. Ok, for me as healer, i have enough to do lol
But you are right, its only good for dps atm.

First question I wanted to raise was the weapons combinations you've come up with so far, especially in terms of what other weapons you can master if your main weapon is a range weapon. I can understand pairing melee weapons with other melee and range weapons, but shouldn't all the range weapons combo into melee weapon trees? There's just some weapons I think players are going to want to use more than others, and I think the way you've arranged the combos might not be flexible enough.
Plus there's the question of retaining the weapon styles we want when performing the combos. This might be a particularly tricky problem for people who use Hand Blasters.

Well. It looks like I might be taking another long break, maybe permanant.

I wonder how this will affect end-game content. A lot of times I see NPCs do counter mechanics in the middle of weapon combos (even the short ones) so I doubt people will still be able to get weapon combos off to be able to fully utilize this new mechanic. As for support powers, i doubt we will be able to use this new mechanic because we are always asked to use our powers to heal, cast instant power, shield whenever the cooldown is out. We'll probably just use the innates attached to the weapon mastery combos more likely if they are good enough.

First of all: I always considered the weapon-combo combat-system the 2nd most important thing of DCUO (1st is DC Comic theme) and I also have always been under the impression, that the dev team can do waaaaaaay better than that with today's technology.

I am already seeing some problems:

• Visualization: The current way the combos are displayed is not really helpful and doesn't allow to show the complex possibilties of some weapons (especially pistols)
• Structure: Left hold always must be a blockbreaker, righthold must interrupt (example: bow has a good-for-nothing combo )
• Channeled weapon attacks: Have always been a problem the handblaster channel-combo, doomspin. They used to be useful in PvE until NPCs learned to interrupt and they are boring. Really!
• Balancing counters: Melee can do AOE interrupts, blockbreaks are always single target. Is that really balanced? Block is sort of AOE too...
• Fluid combat: There is often a situation where you want to change fluidly from melee (interrupt) attacks to ranged (blockbreak) and the other way around. Currently that looks odd with some weapons. Make combos like that and give us choices!
• No interruption: Combos require not to be interrupted. There is almost nothing a player can do to prevent that. Make it a mechanic and give the tank-role a major purpose! (immunities are currently too short to support that)
• Movement: Some attacks move you towards a target or away from it. Non-fliers get into trouble, because you want to lunge into the air and fight the enemies there... Make non-fliers float as long as they keep comboing. Currently I have seen only 1h flurry do that - and that looks very good
• Weaponstyles: Find a way to save them, so we don't see random weaponstyles while comboing ^^

Nothing that can't be solved though. I can still see this from a new player perspective: This could be very cool and fun, but also end up being dificult to understand and learn .

yes because pushing the f2ps out the door even more then the model already does is gonna help the PC sides population..

I'd hate to be a Fire tank after this. They already have so many innates to consider.

Exactly why it would benefit tanks, it will increase their defense so they DONT get killed during animation. Similar to how empowered channeling works.

How. If it effects the raise of the SC, ok, but try to do the combo as healer with an undergeared group and they are dead, befor you finished the combo xD

actually some of the shorter combos can be beneficial. The MA knee launch plus DP air shot, is relatively short, and as a fire tank I believe I could consistently pull it off in any content. Just gotta put sinestro/hank/atrocitious/bleeze on their butts first with a well-timed counter

Was a great show Mepps, but please don't forget us supporters!!
#Healer4life

For those of you who have not understood the reason for "weapon master", it is very simple. It is an attempt to balance powers, balance controller/keyboard and remove macros from the game.
If u play on a controller there was no way you would be able to keep up with a good keyboard player, simple as that. This is probably going to be fixed with the 1.2 sec animation timing. This also is going to stop ppl from using macros, or at least is going to prevent them from exploiting the speed advantage that macros gave them. Many players that post on youtube and here on the forums use macros, you can notice that everytime their toons won't leave the ground when they tap range and jump.
Secondly, powers that did not have precision combos will now be able to compete with HL or Celestial.

When you finish a Weapon Mastery combo there is a brief window to use a power and get a large crit chance/damage boost (100% chance and quadruple damage were mentioned) - this would be a pretty big bonus for Might users, if you're getting four times the damage you would normally for the same power cost.