Frosticus

Those that stand in the way of progress sometimes get run over.
If you have a different understanding of what MMO stands for please share. I've accepted it as the standard definition. Personally it is why I left Infinity when I joined the game because for me it wasn't fitting the definition. What constitutes "many players" is debatable though.

Just because you list it doesn't make it true. The list cited on the first page 7 of the 10 points are subjective personal opinion and nothing more than fear mongering aka smoke. 3 of them have some technical merit that would have varying degrees of difficulty to overcome. Not one of them can't be overcome though and not a single rename or lost SG, or lost characters would need to occur.

I'm actually being really friendly and trying to help. If/when PS does deem in necessary or in the best interest of the game to condense the population that list you guys revere as some sort of anti-merger holy grail will crumble with nothing more than a hard gaze cast toward it.

The biggest fear mongering of all is proclaiming that condensing the population will sound the death knoll for the game. Even though that puts you guys into the doom-criers allegiance (which is humorous) it is a very shortsighted and even ignorant view of the situation.

If PS made a release saying (hypothetical numbers used): our old server structure could only support 200 players in a single instance. So while our game world is vast and awe inspiring we were forced to spread players out over many instances. Rather than just creating numbered instances (which does currently occur during busy times) we opted to create separate named shards. We have since then upgraded our server tech to state of the art constructs that will allow us to support up to 3-4-5 hundred (pick w/e number you like) players in a single instance. To take advantage of our insanely fun, award winning and critically acclaimed zone events and to ensure that every player new and old gets to experience a bustling City Of. experience yada yada yada.

Well that sort of takes the wind out of the doom criers sails imo.

I mean if you can put a positive spin on a company that just failed a major acquisition resulting in a massive drop in share price and still convince investors to fork over huge sums of additional money then I really don't think convincing a bunch of addicted video game players that everything is hunky doory is even remotely a challenge. But it is all about perspective and I understand that a seemingly insurmountable problem for one is a small stepping stone for another.

Which is why I say you will need more than fear mongering, ranting about entitlement, and a few technical hurdles that can likely be overcome relatively easily if you actually want to make a case against a population condensation if/when the time comes. I'm really just trying to be helpful as I actually agree with much of what you say about enjoying the quiet times and what not as I'll often scoot over to DA or Creys to get away from seeing anyone for prolonged periods.

I hope the people(s) responsible for the series of separate and distinct errors that have resulted in SC being what it is today get the wet noodle beating they deserve or however PS doles out reprimands to prevent such future easily avoidable mistakes.

It is a big disconcerting though, the "clients" have been sending in reports that should have been "audited" for a long time regarding Shield Charge. If the issue had just gone unattended that would be one thing, but it received green light for a major change and wasn't "audited" at that point either.

Is there a lack of communication at PS where the QA team doesn't have access to proper information on how the power designers have implemented powers to function? Something is amiss internally because this issue was easily preventable and is now either going to result in a massive nerf or at the very least another ill afforded time sink from an overworked power design team to rectify the issue.

What the old saying? "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Test stuff better before it goes live please and at the very least please don't authorize changes to powers without some form of audit performed on said power (this is honestly what is bugging me most). You're a busy guy and now look at the mess that has been created. We all want the game to succeed, but players have a right to be upset in this case. You strike me as being overly defensive about this issue, but regardless of where you want the blame to be placed it is not in the hands of the players. We have performed our due diligence with regard to Shield Charge and the same can not be said of PS. If you are getting upset at what players are saying now just wait until you go through with the necessary (and large) reduction to the power, it will be worse than ever because it was approved for a massive buff. And All in a short time frame relative to the evolution of other powers in this game.

We all understand that this may not be your fault directly, but you are the one addressing the issue and afaik you oversee the powers team. You are welcome to throw an underling under the bus if you want, some managers do that, or you can accept the responsibility inherent with overseeing a team.

I'm not interested in the forthcoming apology that has accompanied many of the power changes recently. I couldn't care less if you guys are remorseful about changing things. I personally think it is pretty tacky to attach emotion to the process and seems manufactured actually. I care about the specific breakdown in the process that allowed something like this to happen and making sure it is corrected so that future development is more efficient and productive. If the limited time card is going to be played constantly then I'm interested in making that finite resource stretch further.

The subtleties of programming barely enter in this case. Deflection of the issue via the standard code rant just doesn't hold water. The Shield Charge fiasco has developed because people weren't checking their work. Predicting every possible outcome and every possible bug was not required, just checking the power a handful of times before pushing it to live would have sufficed.

Failing that, listening when players asked why SC is better than L-rod probably would have helped. And finally when changing the power to follow AT modifiers and players asked "are you for real wanting to make SC do 200 base damage?" reading that might have raised a flag too.

Controllers are the most powerful class in the game. Dominators aren't. That's the difference. Top end controller builds have considerably more aoe damage than dominators and are ahead of every dominator secondary except /fire for single target damage too.

They do it very differently though. Doms feel very direct and too the point whereas controllers are more lithe and you often don't realize how quickly they can move until an entire map is defeated quickly and easily. Of course you can always take /stone app on a troller and feel about as "smashy" as any dominator does too.

As for the plant/fire you are thinking of you will definitely want firebreath to leverage against the confused mobs. If you are really not into that attack then I'd take a different primary. The confuse will still be have a net advantage for you, but it can get a little frustrating seeing drastically reduced rewards per defeat. Firebreath will ensure even faster defeats and a higher reward value per mob. win win.

You can't negate the crash to 0*, but you can have enough recovery where the -recovery debuff is overcome so you don't remain flatlined.

The nuke should hit you with -16.7 end/sec and we recover 1.67 base so we need to overcome 15.03 negative end/sec. So if you hit 8 targets with:
unslotted DP = 10.02 eps recovery
1 end mod IO = 14.27 eps (this + stamina will let you start recovering, but quite slowly)
2 end mod IO = 18.37 eps (this should keep you trucking along nicely)

The aoe isn't that big though so hitting 8 can be a bit tough. 7 will let you recover through it, but 6 hit (with 2 end IO's) probably won't. Or at least not much. It is a good idea to switch buff display to numeric stacking (if it isn't already) so you know how many you have actually hit and whether you'll need further blue assistance.

*You can occasionally not crash to zero if perf shifter procs at precisely the right time. Pretty rare though

I think we'll probably see some mobs that buff the tohit of those around them, ala tactics but probably without the perception. Also more mobs that give "shout" commands and such that boost mez protection and either acc or tohit.

I think Def as a whole will take a step down with some of the high lvl GR mobs. We might even see more mobs with weak versions of aim (ie much lower dam/tohit buff)

You are absolutely right and it was a question I asked during the dom revamp why only one attack gets to hit 16 while the other ones that fill the same role (thornburst, ice circle, combustion, whirling...) only get to hit 10. I don't recall getting any kind of meaningful answer other than "just cause"

I was voting for all dom aoes to match the aoes in their controls and hit 16 targets. It seems silly to have controls affecting an entire group but your assault powers being unable to kill them all at the same time. Kinda clunky imo.

That said:
PSW with 3 SO's dam and rech
137.9 per target * 16 targets = 2206
2206/cycle time (12.37)
=178.4

Psyscream (same enhances)
148*10 targets = 1480
1480/cycle time (11.11)
=133.2

Sum of AoE dps 178.4+133.2 = 311.6

Combustion (same enhances)
148.03*10 targets =1480.3
1480.3 /cycle time (11.89)
=124.49
w/ FE = 178.76

Firebreath
180.77*10 targets = 1807.7
1807.7/cycle time (11.11)
162.7
w/ FE = 233.63

Sum of AoE dps 124.49+162.7 = 287.19
with FE 178.76+233.63 = 412.39

Basically they are very close in terms of AOE output, with fire quite a bit ahead of AoE damage per target and psy able to hit more targets for PSW bring Psy ahead by a narrow margin. With FE up fire is ahead by quite a large margin in per target damage and overall aoe performance.

*More recharge helps PSW more than Combustion, but more recharge helps fire have FE up more often. Pick your poison.

Worth noting that many AoE doms pair up with fire primary for Hotfeet. FE is pretty amazing with this power.

That said, a dom has to survive to deliver aoe damage, for which DP is huge and the stun/-rech of PSW and psyscream are of value too.

lol, so it does. Dahjee was the lowest rep I'd seen so far. Too funny.

It really is. The first encounter I dropped him really easily (before my pet dismissed so ~4min), not sure why, but it didn't even feel like he had a godmode active (I actually looked him up to see what powers he has after lol). I expected to get my clocked cleaned so I didn't take any screens. I killed him again, but had the UI shut off. Then he killed me the next two attempts due to me playing poorly. The last run that I took images of he was really slippery in overclock mode and it took me forever to drop him, but it felt more like the fight he should have supplied as I had to be on guard through much of it.

I hope you are right, but I publicly stated the same thing with even more gusto than you with regard to the upcoming pvp changes back in i12. I'm sort of in a position now of "fool me once..." His post in this thread show he is/was using the wrong numbers and may or may not have reacted poorly to a very small and insignificant sample that may or may not be representative of what actually occurs in game.

He's as fallible as anyone has a right to be, but he has certain expectations placed on him due to his position and responsibilities. One of those is probably checking the final version of a power before it goes live after you give the OK to let it be changed (ie gave the nod to change SC to abide by AT modifiers), which from his postings didn't happen. If that is the responsibility of someone else then it should also be the responsibility of someone else to give the initial green light to change.

The other is probably checking to ensure you are posting accurate information with regard to what is being discussed. If something is performing well and he says he'll "look into it" that is generally not a good thing if you like that aspect of performance (ie DM now enters the discussion because of what appears to be misinformation being used regarding Shields).

I don't really care what happens tbh, it is just a game and I'm not hooked on any melee AT, but the guy has very limited time by his own admission. From an efficiency standpoint of not wasting time it is probably useful to be using accurate information and to not publicly state concern over a very small sample of results. Doing that is what half-cocked players get to do, not the lead powers dev.

Just imo of course and I'm sure you guys are absolutely right that he has much more accurate and complete information than we do and it will be properly used in the event of changes occurring. It only makes sense based on what we've seen.

edit: This is a retarded tangent to what was once a very productive discussion. He is welcome to chase ghosts all day if he wants. And if he decides to roll his face around on the keyboard and then hit submit we should all be gracious of it.

I recommend earth/fire or plant/fire. Fire assault does a lot more damage than any of the other secondaries. Unfortunately no doms are AOE beasts anymore, but firebreath+combustion does by quite a bit more damage than the next best aoe combo of psyscream+PSW. Especially with FE being up so often.

Earth offers a ton of control and can neutralize huge spawns without issue. Heck it can handle a couple full sized spawns at once. One of the staple powers Earthquake is functionally the same as Iceslick, just better as it lowers def and debuffs their tohit as well.

Plant while primarily playing around a single strength is very good at that strength. Seeds of Confusion is amazing control and /fire adds the aoe and st damage to quickly vaporize the confused group.

I've got an earth/fire perma dom and it has sort of ruined other doms for me because /fire is by far the best damage choice and earth is really really good.

Is pretty?

I've flipped back and forth on this issue myself. It raises a lot of questions with no clear answers.

Like, why should a fire armor scrapper with no innate defense be allowed to hit 45% but my FF defender that is more or less defense based not be permitted that same luxury?

I think the only way to really balance the situation is to apply caps on a per powerset basis rather than per AT. ie Fire armor can hit 35% def and capped res, SR can hit capped over softcap def, but only 60% res. Or something like that. The issue of course is that you start shoehorning people into specific build directions. That of course is assuming you even want the sets within each AT to reach similar peak performance.

I dunno, crazy thoughts. I know softcapped squishies still faceplant in many situations so the lack of DDR is probably good enough. Like you said.

Ya there is no afraid attached to the power so mob fleeing is likely a bug, but it has been present for a while. It doesn't always happen, but when it does it is pretty annoying.

I thought you were just starting a new winky revolution.

Look Castle, I've been trying really hard to be supportive of you since taking a break after the last time I got sick of some of your shortsighted moves. But if you want that kind of support then you can't post things that are representative of someone with no understanding of the situation and expect it to just go over smoothly. You are supposed to be the guy that knows. If you don't know it is far better to PM someone who does before proceeding.

What you posted looked like a knee jerk reaction to me and I really don't think I'm alone. But lets continue being nice and more on topic shall we? Just how much st dps is a fully saturated AAO+fully saturated (just shy of perma) soul drain+optimal attack chain+procs DM/shields supposed to produce then?

AAO+souldrain adds +231% damage buff. I'm reasonably confident that in the event that you make that buff as close to permanent as possible it is going to have drastic results on your performance. Meaning that the low side of DM with no damage buffs is going to be pretty mediocre (for damage) and the high side is going to be amazing. I mean that is basically the "fulcrum shifting" combo.

Here's a really important consideration though. If you think about only one thing from this post and pick it to harp on then let it be this:

Is the fact that they have to surround themselves with high hp fodder so that it actually lasts through the souldraining of any sort of relevance? Cause you know it usually takes them several minutes of prepping to make that sort of run whereas fire/shield can pretty much just grab the first fodder in sight and pull it over and most other toons just jump right in and go to town on it. Would this discussion be happening if those DM's were including prep time? Should they be?

Before you just jump to the obvious "no" what if I stack the 25 or so trip mines that my corr is technically capable of doing and then pull and EB into it and a couple acid mortars and one shot it. Is my dps infinite? If you ignore prep time on the DM then the only answer is that my dps is ~infinite on that corruptor in that scenario. The same can take off over half an AV's hp at which point I start scourging and do far more damage than any corruptor should be capable of because I didn't have to spend any time chewing through the non-scourge period.