Part Quality, Epic vs Common, Armor, Secondary Effects

from Stardock Forums

First, what the heck is the "quality" factor for a part? It doesn't appear to do anything other than control the up or down arrows.

I have several "common" weapons which do more damage than purple and even epic weapons on a per second basis, but the up arrow shows up on the epic ones simply because they have a higher "quality" number. The common weapons are clearly superior due to the enhanced DPS. For example, I have two one-handed pistols at rarity "better" which do above 17 DPS and attack very fast. I have a two-handed cold-shot rifle which does 17.1 DPS at normal attack speed but is listed as rarity "artisan." It shows up as a better weapon option than equipping the two one handed pistols even though the two one handed pistols do twice the DPS. Yes, the cold shot rifle has some extra attack it can do, but it has a 45 second cooldown on that and at most it's 100 extra damage every 45 seconds. That assumes a rank 4 mech. That only adds an extra 2.2 DPS. Yes it also freezes for 4 seconds. But big whoop. I can kill every enemy servo twice as fast with the two pistols and that gets me far more time without them shooting at me than the 4 second stun does. And it always works like that, without me needing to remember to do anything. So, those two pistols at 17 DPS are always going to be better than the two hander at 17 DPS with the extra stun shot. And, even one pistol with a shield equipped is better as it reduces incoming damage significantly. No matter how you slice it, that artisan part is nowhere near as good. I also have a two-handed "common" rifle which does 42 DPS and the Artisan part is listed as better than that one. The same logic applies. 42 DPS vs 17 DPS ... there is no way the Artisan part (though higher "quality") is a better option to equip. 

I have several volley pods of various quality and I have two Epic Stun Grenade Launchers. Again, the Epic falls far short of the common volley pods. The volley pods dish out 300 - 450 damage per round in a large area and have great range. Yes, they have a slow cooldown, but they can clean up enemies like it's nobody's business. The Stun Grenade has limited usefulness. IF you can manage to hit what you are aiming for before it moves out of the way, you can technically stun a ton of enemies and then hit them with a volley before they move. Except, the stun grenade is so slow at launching that they are almost always out of the area before it lands, so it's rather hit or miss on whether you stun anything, much less a large group of enemies. The stun doesn't last long enough to do serious damage unless you can follow it with an immediate volley of missles or two. But the stun grenade launcher is an epic part and the volley pods are common. So, the stun grenade launcher shows up as an upgrade to the volley pods, even though the volley pods are clearly superior.

Armor seems to not be too helpful. I built a melee servo which was decked out with the highest armor gear I could put on him (he had armor just over 20) and gave him an Epic drill and shield. I could tell the armor was reducing incoming damage, but not enough to outweigh the fact that he has to stand there being bashed on by tons of mobs. Giving him a ranged weapon and replacing the armor with volley pods made him much more survivable as I could just walk him around the map and dodge incoming attacks and snipe enemies. So, either armor usefulness needs to increase, or melee weapons need to do a lot more damage to compensate for the close quarters fighting with so many mobs.

Secondary effects are what exactly? I have a thing which protects me from them for 7 seconds, but it never seems to do anything useful for me. It's listed as better than almost every piece of gear I can put in that slot, but it seemed totally useless. I thought maybe corrosion or fire or something, but there's no way I can trigger it on time to protect against such attacks on a per-attack basis, at least not unless he's my only servo to control. It either needs to work all the time or it needs to go away. It's certainly not very useful at the moment.

servo
7,671 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Quality is relative to the weapon's level. Higher level common gear will likely be better the lower level rare gear.

The quality formula in place overweights the specials more than it should, so you do end up with the problems/bugs you're seeing. On the list to fix.

I'd be fine agreeing that the cost/benefit tradeoff between volley pods and armor isn't balanced at this point. Armor is an easier equip for some folks. We have people who prefer to not fire off all the specials all the time and do the micro required to keep a ranged unit from eating it all the time.

Immunitizer drops all debuffs on you when you fire it. So, if you're on fire/corroding/whatever, it'll chuck those and prevent anything else for that time period. In our tests, it's borderline OP. But YMMV. It really depends on who you play. If they're not firing off good uses of specials and combos, then yeah, it's probably less useful.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting BXP_Godgib, reply 1

Immunitizer drops all debuffs on you when you fire it. So, if you're on fire/corroding/whatever, it'll chuck those and prevent anything else for that time period. In our tests, it's borderline OP. But YMMV. It really depends on who you play. If they're not firing off good uses of specials and combos, then yeah, it's probably less useful.

I found that either I forgot about it, and when I did remember it wasn't off initial cooldown.  Maybe it will become more useful if I find status issues in the future, but if I recall it's a shoulder slot, which is a dear commodity.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting wondible, reply 2


Quoting BXP_Godgib,
reply 1

Immunitizer drops all debuffs on you when you fire it. So, if you're on fire/corroding/whatever, it'll chuck those and prevent anything else for that time period. In our tests, it's borderline OP. But YMMV. It really depends on who you play. If they're not firing off good uses of specials and combos, then yeah, it's probably less useful.



I found that either I forgot about it, and when I did remember it wasn't off initial cooldown.  Maybe it will become more useful if I find status issues in the future, but if I recall it's a shoulder slot, which is a dear commodity.

There is way too much stuff in the shoulder slots IMO. Not enough cpus. Comfy Pilot Chair could be a cpu for instance. grenade boxes feel good where they are though cause they give you the choice of a 30 sec nade launcher with something else or a 15 sec nade launcher, great tradeoff.

Immunizer would be good against a team packing debuffs, my team makes heavy use of fire and stun with a bit of freezing. Immunizer would let a mech walk out of being stunned, set on fire and focus fired, and would let you juke them into blowing their load on the immune mech. If you had an ability weapon it would probably be less of a trade off too, a way to get that mech up to the other team, use its other shoulder and weapon ability, and run away. If I had 3 of them it'd be interesting to use them, but I have so many nice shoulder items I don't use the 1 copy of it I have on my account right now.

It is pretty similar to a 'pvp trinket' from World of Warcraft, but a word of warning about balancing such a thing: The PVP meta in WoW from vanilla all the way till I quit in the 4th expansion pack, had that item as mandatory for everyone. Blizzard obliged and made it readily available for all. Figuring out the best time to use it was interesting and a good skill check and all that but the damn thing was mandatory. You may want to keep it rare and at a high opportunity cost to use on all. I worry a little that zeke/zeth pilot ability is too similar to shoulder item abilities that he might be the go to pilot for having only 1 shoulder weapon and a weird item in the other slot. Like the comfy pilot chair.