Having dueled quite a bit and spent a considerable time working with the Nanoseer class, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad a post like the one above would suggest.
Outside of lacking for damage in regards to affliction/subsystem based routes (something other classes have little shortage of) and therefore having to give up offensive momentum for repairing in any matchup that isn't a mirror, there's really not much that's weak. While I can't say yet, it seems likely this is a problem that gets lesser and lesser the higher your level is though that will still depend on the relative damage output of your opponent. So, small adjustments here and there yes, but, overall, everything works quite well.
Previously, Analyze was much too strong and made it far too easy to keep key afflictions up without risk, something that would be doubly true now that distract and sluggish don't cure anything. As it is, the new Analyze is still extremely useful and you can know all you need from it, though, it would be awesome if it included muscular status as well given the class can hit muscular via limbdrain. But, knowing the exact afflictions on every subsystem was overboard.
Mind 25% for mindmelt is perhaps harsh, however, the increased affliction check is likely to factor in how it's far easier to use and upkeep sluggish and distract now, both of which are of course, mind afflictions, so I've no problem with that.
Anyway, suggestion wise, I would adore a way to do something like 'oblivion mindmelt [swap]' to swap to the required channel if needed and you have swap balance, because, as is, it's cumbersome to use swap given the game's queue limitation, something that could also perhaps be applied to Timeline so that it's more user friendly, especially for people with higher latency, to use the off-balance aspect of the skill.
I agree for the most part, but re: analyze, I think your statement is coming more from theory than practice. With a one second balance (during which an aff can be cured) and a 10 second cooldown, as well as not seeing what confound delivered (which could double up), I never felt that I had perfect knowledge of their afflictions. Certainly not moreso than with the current analyze, which still gives me a number. But I like to see muscular/internal levels and affs too, as well as sensory levels, mend efficacy, and health. Mend efficacy and health can pretty much be tracked anyway (if there's a way to figure out their max health) so I'll probably just code something. The rest aren't terribly important but having a full diag is just fun. I don't really actually expect the change to impact combat much.
I previously suggested some kind of swap combo command. Whether it's like you said, or just something like OBLIVION SWAP CONQUERER <ability>, I still think that'd be handy.
I really wish we could see what confound delivered so we could guess better whether it doubled up (still wouldn't know for sure since the prior aff may have gotten cured).
Also, re: not doing damage. Damage is hinder in this game since it forces the opponent to go off balance for non-offensive moves more often. But most damage classes also deliver frequent hinder afflictions like damaged limbs---staggering too in beast's case. Distract/sluggish are stronger than an ordinary damaged limb affs but are making up for both those affs and the hinder from damage itself for us. I don't think them being easier to stick is a bad thing. If we, for example, waste a balance because we try to distract when there aren't 3 affs or try to sluggish when distract just got cured, we're essentially hindering ourselves more rather than our opponents when they already had heavy hinder on us.
It honestly might be cool if we could tie the damaged limb affs into our offense more in some smaller way (since they offer damage and hindering affs like most classes can as part of their main offense). Maybe an ability that directly damages wetwiring based on muscular affs. Or maybe limbdrain could drain health into yourself, healing you, so you can sometimes use it instead of repair (it obviously wouldn't heal as much as repair, though, so not a total replacement).
On a completely different note, I really think NANO ORDER balance has to be much smaller (like 1.5 seconds) since control already has a 3 second balance, you can only order within ten seconds of control, and it also has a substantial CD. Control also shouldn't require quite so many nanites.
What exactly does Analyze show now, out of curiosity? Like what does the thing look like now.
It's basically: Number of mind affs: 3 Mind system: 100% Number of sensory affs: 2 WW system: 100% Freeze level: 3
It's got everything we need, no question. I just don't really see a reason for nerfing it. People liked it. It wasn't OP. And we have other weaknesses (like not dealing damage) that are fairly major so I think people just think "wtf" when something that wasn't even crazy is changed.
Honestly, most of those things are fine. I agree about control (less nanite cost, less order bal), drain (needs to do something besides just resource drain because the amount drained isn't really a net gain), and interdict (needs no or much shorter CD), but otherwise none of those things are actually useless.
The confound/distract/sluggish could use some tweaking, but not in all of the ways you're saying. If confound didn't double up, for example, distract would be fine as is because you'd be able to reliably predict 3 affs. Honestly, though, just being able to see when something is cured (not what is cured) would solve pretty much all of our problems there. Even just a lingering effect of analyze. If an aff is cured/wears off in the next few seconds after analyze, your nanites detect it as they're leaving the person. Not what is cured, just that something is cured, so nano can lose the rng of affs being cured between analyze and whatever they are doing next.
Alternatively, I really don't think it'd hurt to have more tells as to when distract and/or sluggish is stuck. Beast sees everytime they armvice you whether staggering is still stuck because you stagger. It'd be nice if we saw "person moves sluggish to act" when they do things while sluggish.
Honestly, shatter seems close to right for 1v1 (though I'm saying this without too much experience yet, only a little) so I'd hate to nerf it in any substantial way that impacts 1v1, especially without seeing it more in practice. It'd probably just make the most sense to make the 30 second roomdrain CD apply to the whole room. "This room has already been frozen too recently" kind of thing for the whole 30 seconds.
Can be, though it does do damage, so as long as it's doing that it's taking them closer to their death. On the other hand, on denizens using frozen seems to reset the 8s cure, but on players it does not. Perhaps the problem lies in a bug instead of a balance change?
Can be, though it does do damage, so as long as it's doing that it's taking them closer to their death. On the other hand, on denizens using frozen seems to reset the 8s cure, but on players it does not. Perhaps the problem lies in a bug instead of a balance change?
it doesn't reset it, it just adds another stack that takes the same length of time as the first to heal.
It's not theory but nor is it perfect science and I think, at this early stage, that holds true for every ability and every class. So far I've had some success in attempts to maintain distraction and sluggish via means of analyze since after the changes in actual combat. It could be better and of course having time-based affliction length or messages for when things fade makes it a lot easier and removes elements of chance which is great, but, my point, gained through practice, is that it's not full on impossible to use in its current state. Analyze, see number of afflictions. Meet the check? Apply distraction. Apply sluggish. (They can cure distraction before you sluggish and that's crummy) Now there's rng in keeping either up, however, if analyze shows 3 or less afflictions it's probably safe to assume you can reuse them.
Rather than flat out showing everything cured at all times, perhaps a skill, possibly through envelop, that allows a limited window in which you can see enemy curing or even a skill that allows you to watch for the curing of a certain afflictions of your choosing. Or even a display such as: 'x cured an affliction of the mind'. This would make it more interesting than blanket information of knowing everything at all times, kind of like how if someone eats a kelp with clumsy/asthma/weariness you can't always right away be sure what they healed and that leads into more interesting combat.
However! Since Wuff has decided to nae say virtually everything and even gone so far as to basically insult me, I feel there's little point trying to hold any sort of discourse here.
Having to reduce your approximate 3Million nanites left after buffs, down to 2Million allows one or two attacks at most, and forces you into using progenitor almost always. I definitely don't feel we need to be reducing currently available nanites anymore.
Nothing about nanite generation, totals and requirements needs be set in stone and that, like virtually everything posted about here, is very likely open to further change given the ever-evolving state of balance at the moment. And such things need not be based on nanite use either. It could just as easily be oblivion or what have you. Channel a given emperyal and exchange part of your sanity for the temporary use of their 'eyes' so you can see certain curing, something that would also encourage more use of oblivion.
However! Since Wuff has decided to nae say virtually everything and even gone so far as to basically insult me, I feel there's little point trying to hold any sort of discourse here.
No surprise there, you were arguing with the kind of player who won't stop complaining until his class is top meta AND a better pvper explains all the mechanics to him. Help me Ronin!
Just be glad he's not playing a beast or the forums would explode.
Apparently Nanoseer is #2 DPS for bashing, so we probably won't see any buffs from the devs. Can someone please tell me the secret? Because as an engineer, my attack does 221 (claw) + 295 (bleed) + 245 (turret), translating to approximately 253 DPS (at minimum; the bleed amount goes up as the fight continues). My nanoseer path does something like 140 DPS...
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
On average at 54 I'll hit multi, freeze 180, swarm 280, multi tick120. And it goes on like that pretty consistently. This is without frenzy which is a 25% increase. I believe our dps numbers are being compared 1:1 in combat balance with other classes and not including the amount of time we spend out of combat buffing. Either way. Our damage isn't lacking, it's just applying the buffs after each fight over and over that's really slowing us down.
I can assure you that our damage is lacking. At least, the multi-freeze-swarm set up.
If you have a free class change still available, try out Engineer for a day or so. You literally just need Bots Swing (interrupt, 112 lessons) + Gadgets Stimjector (75 lessons) + Turrets QPC (157 lessons).
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
I intend to, after all, I'm interested in positive discussion not drama. Contributing nothing of merit while belittling others is not only pointless, but immature.
So, regarding bashing: having played mostly as Fury, Engineer and Nanoseer, nano feels the clunkiest to me thus far, especially after speedup was fixed concerning mobs. I'm all for more involved bashing (engineer is just bot turret, claw, injector and does strong dps) but it's irksome when the involvement yields nothing too great, unless there's some trick I'm missing here outside the usual routine of freezing, multistriking and swarming.
Some ideas and thoughts though: limbdrain is nice-ish for bashing (just to apply a couple of damaged limbs to reduce incoming damage). Vaccumsphere is great if there's only one target in the room! If only suffocate couldn't be cut off by being damaged so easily (even if it it's not 100% chance as is) then it would be amazing, hehe. Oh, might of already noticed but as it stands, mobs die from subsystem damage the same as players so you can confound a few times into minddrain and watch as something goes into a hard cascade quite quickly due to the multiplied subsystem damage they take, though, I don't think it's faster to do this than fighting 'normally'. Now if they would just be effected by instants...
Just turn Frenzy and Speedup into a permanent buff that drains a little sanity every few seconds, and have kills you make on mobs regen sanity depending on the Oblivion person you're dancing with.
Problem solved? OR More problems? I shall let you decide.
The only problem with allowing instants to apply would be that as nano you could very easily instant mobs, which would allow you to fight things quite a bit above your level. as it stands just confound and mindswap is about 20% of a creature's mind sys. not counting the confounds as mindswap is proccing. for testing purposes I tried it and the creature has 8% mind left by the time that mindswap ends. This would pose a problem as subsystem damage doesnt change by the level of creature so you could have theorhetically a level 20 killing level 30-40 things, or a level 50 killing 60-70, etc so long as they can soak damage for 5ish balances. https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/zH2s4Scb
That aside I would love to be able to kill creatures with subsystem damage and instas
for mindmelt 6, or even maybe 7 affs because of distract/sluggish, and 50% mind subsys would make more sense, and still be more difficult than it was, and take longer, but not so long that we don't stand a chance when pushing for a mindmelt. 75% takes too long to get too, and any decent scoundrel, fury, or even beast will kill you before you reach this point. I haven't fought many engineers, so i can't say for sure regarding them, but I remember Maruna ripping me up pretty quickly, so they can also likely be added to that list.
Breakdown is easier, takes about 20s more than the old mindmelt did if you pressure sensory and mind both, and we have WW in analyze now too.
I did some testing as well with bashing, and my DPS while I kill a lapine using fury/multi/freeze/swarm is 93.34, and takes 32s from start to finish. This is pretty bad when compared to the other classes.
no. full damage. The reduction that annoyed me was the atza's in the quarry. 50-65 area and you get DR at 50, but they definitely hit you plenty hard. haha
for mindmelt 6, or even maybe 7 affs because of distract/sluggish, and 50% mind subsys would make more sense, and still be more difficult than it was, and take longer, but not so long that we don't stand a chance when pushing for a mindmelt. 75% takes too long to get too, and any decent scoundrel, fury, or even beast will kill you before you reach this point. I haven't fought many engineers, so i can't say for sure regarding them, but I remember Maruna ripping me up pretty quickly, so they can also likely be added to that list.
Breakdown is easier, takes about 20s more than the old mindmelt did if you pressure sensory and mind both, and we have WW in analyze now too.
I did some testing as well with bashing, and my DPS while I kill a lapine using fury/multi/freeze/swarm is 93.34, and takes 32s from start to finish. This is pretty bad when compared to the other classes.
I'm not entirely sure that Breakdown isn't only working because of buggy feedback. The numbers don't seem right to me. Sensory and Mind both below 90 is 2% wetwiring damage every ten seconds. That seems insanely slow. 250 seconds to get to Breakdown with no wetwiring mends? Even with wireblock, they can just mend when it fades.
Sometimes feedback inexplicably spikes and they take like 50% in 5-10 seconds, which is where I usually get Breakdowns but also seems like a bug. Maybe I am missing something though?
Sensory and Mind both below 90 is 2% wetwiring damage every ten seconds. That seems insanely slow. 250 seconds to get to Breakdown with no wetwiring mends? Even with wireblock, they can just mend when it fades.
Sometimes feedback inexplicably spikes and they take like 50% in 5-10 seconds, which is where I usually get Breakdowns but also seems like a bug. Maybe I am missing something though?
Drain scales to how low the systems are, fyi.
(disclaimer: Wetwiring I'm not 100% sure on; I know the others scale this way. Only time I even touched wetwiring was when I hard locked Balthazar as low lvl scoundrel)
I think the changes they put in would prevent that (mobs above your level by X amount resist your affs).
The WW insta doesnt require affs.
Sure, but affs are how we deal subsystem damage. Are you saying they take the damage even if they resist the aff? It doesn't seem like they would.
They do, if they didn't then damage classes would have that over us as well. as our affliction attacks don't do normal damage. Just subsys at an increased amount.
Strictly in PvE I was able to have that creature in the pastebin within one tick of breakdown by time time the first mindswap wore off, using only mental afflictions. And 8 afflictions for the Mindmelt Insta too.
Comments
I previously suggested some kind of swap combo command. Whether it's like you said, or just something like OBLIVION SWAP CONQUERER <ability>, I still think that'd be handy.
I really wish we could see what confound delivered so we could guess better whether it doubled up (still wouldn't know for sure since the prior aff may have gotten cured).
Also, re: not doing damage. Damage is hinder in this game since it forces the opponent to go off balance for non-offensive moves more often. But most damage classes also deliver frequent hinder afflictions like damaged limbs---staggering too in beast's case. Distract/sluggish are stronger than an ordinary damaged limb affs but are making up for both those affs and the hinder from damage itself for us. I don't think them being easier to stick is a bad thing. If we, for example, waste a balance because we try to distract when there aren't 3 affs or try to sluggish when distract just got cured, we're essentially hindering ourselves more rather than our opponents when they already had heavy hinder on us.
It honestly might be cool if we could tie the damaged limb affs into our offense more in some smaller way (since they offer damage and hindering affs like most classes can as part of their main offense). Maybe an ability that directly damages wetwiring based on muscular affs. Or maybe limbdrain could drain health into yourself, healing you, so you can sometimes use it instead of repair (it obviously wouldn't heal as much as repair, though, so not a total replacement).
On a completely different note, I really think NANO ORDER balance has to be much smaller (like 1.5 seconds) since control already has a 3 second balance, you can only order within ten seconds of control, and it also has a substantial CD. Control also shouldn't require quite so many nanites.
Number of mind affs: 3
Mind system: 100%
Number of sensory affs: 2
WW system: 100%
Freeze level: 3
It's got everything we need, no question. I just don't really see a reason for nerfing it. People liked it. It wasn't OP. And we have other weaknesses (like not dealing damage) that are fairly major so I think people just think "wtf" when something that wasn't even crazy is changed.
Honestly, most of those things are fine. I agree about control (less nanite cost, less order bal), drain (needs to do something besides just resource drain because the amount drained isn't really a net gain), and interdict (needs no or much shorter CD), but otherwise none of those things are actually useless.
The confound/distract/sluggish could use some tweaking, but not in all of the ways you're saying. If confound didn't double up, for example, distract would be fine as is because you'd be able to reliably predict 3 affs. Honestly, though, just being able to see when something is cured (not what is cured) would solve pretty much all of our problems there. Even just a lingering effect of analyze. If an aff is cured/wears off in the next few seconds after analyze, your nanites detect it as they're leaving the person. Not what is cured, just that something is cured, so nano can lose the rng of affs being cured between analyze and whatever they are doing next.
Alternatively, I really don't think it'd hurt to have more tells as to when distract and/or sluggish is stuck. Beast sees everytime they armvice you whether staggering is still stuck because you stagger. It'd be nice if we saw "person moves sluggish to act" when they do things while sluggish.
Rather than flat out showing everything cured at all times, perhaps a skill, possibly through envelop, that allows a limited window in which you can see enemy curing or even a skill that allows you to watch for the curing of a certain afflictions of your choosing. Or even a display such as: 'x cured an affliction of the mind'. This would make it more interesting than blanket information of knowing everything at all times, kind of like how if someone eats a kelp with clumsy/asthma/weariness you can't always right away be sure what they healed and that leads into more interesting combat.
However! Since Wuff has decided to nae say virtually everything and even gone so far as to basically insult me, I feel there's little point trying to hold any sort of discourse here.
I definitely don't feel we need to be reducing currently available nanites anymore.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
If you have a free class change still available, try out Engineer for a day or so. You literally just need Bots Swing (interrupt, 112 lessons) + Gadgets Stimjector (75 lessons) + Turrets QPC (157 lessons).
- Ilyos (August 2019)
@Aya You should probably just ignore Wuff.
So, regarding bashing: having played mostly as Fury, Engineer and Nanoseer, nano feels the clunkiest to me thus far, especially after speedup was fixed concerning mobs. I'm all for more involved bashing (engineer is just bot turret, claw, injector and does strong dps) but it's irksome when the involvement yields nothing too great, unless there's some trick I'm missing here outside the usual routine of freezing, multistriking and swarming.
Some ideas and thoughts though: limbdrain is nice-ish for bashing (just to apply a couple of damaged limbs to reduce incoming damage). Vaccumsphere is great if there's only one target in the room! If only suffocate couldn't be cut off by being damaged so easily (even if it it's not 100% chance as is) then it would be amazing, hehe. Oh, might of already noticed but as it stands, mobs die from subsystem damage the same as players so you can confound a few times into minddrain and watch as something goes into a hard cascade quite quickly due to the multiplied subsystem damage they take, though, I don't think it's faster to do this than fighting 'normally'. Now if they would just be effected by instants...
Problem solved? OR More problems? I shall let you decide.
Method: traveller -> speedup/swap to progenitor -> multistrike -> freeze -> swarm. TTK is 34s.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/wY3Xs1nd
Method: conqueror -> frenzy -> multistrike -> freeze -> swarm. TTK is 37s.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/iS86RYda
Method: conqueror -> frenzy -> pointzero -> suffocate. TTK is 47s
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/raa3CoIp
For comparison, here's Engineer bot swing at TTK 21s.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/2e1TjYBB
- Ilyos (August 2019)
for testing purposes I tried it and the creature has 8% mind left by the time that mindswap ends. This would pose a problem as subsystem damage doesnt change by the level of creature so you could have theorhetically a level 20 killing level 30-40 things, or a level 50 killing 60-70, etc so long as they can soak damage for 5ish balances.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/zH2s4Scb
That aside I would love to be able to kill creatures with subsystem damage and instas
Breakdown is easier, takes about 20s more than the old mindmelt did if you pressure sensory and mind both, and we have WW in analyze now too.
I did some testing as well with bashing, and my DPS while I kill a lapine using fury/multi/freeze/swarm is 93.34, and takes 32s from start to finish. This is pretty bad when compared to the other classes.
Sure, but affs are how we deal subsystem damage. Are you saying they take the damage even if they resist the aff? It doesn't seem like they would.
I'm not entirely sure that Breakdown isn't only working because of buggy feedback. The numbers don't seem right to me. Sensory and Mind both below 90 is 2% wetwiring damage every ten seconds. That seems insanely slow. 250 seconds to get to Breakdown with no wetwiring mends? Even with wireblock, they can just mend when it fades.
Sometimes feedback inexplicably spikes and they take like 50% in 5-10 seconds, which is where I usually get Breakdowns but also seems like a bug. Maybe I am missing something though?
And 8 afflictions for the Mindmelt Insta too.