Thanks, that's interesting and I can understand that now. It's a big mess. Mods do some combo, arcanes create some more, ranged weapons now have combo, all sorts of stacks going on. I mean, 'elite' players aren't even going to notice as they just annihilate everything anyway, but the 'middle-class' group just starting with Arcanes have a very inconsistent experience.
Combo at least doesn't require kills to work. That's sensible as at least pounding on a group of enemies will build your power, so long as you can survive. With these weapon arcanes etc, you have to be strong enough to kill them immediately to then get the power to kill them, seems kinda illogical.
Not even new player I think. For New players you get a fairly reasonable run going through the star chart so you know what to do, but you learn nothing about goals in power and acquirement of it. It's insane, you finish the star chart and then there's a million things to do with no direction or idea why. You get an Arcane or two, see youtube videos where of course you need finished arcanes (good luck with an Eidolon up front) and to drop serration, then need to figure out all this business with status stacks, combining now with damage and crit stacks, gating, ENERGY SUSTAIN, focus schools, damage types, weapon tiers and unlocks, incarnon, etc.
To this, I like that there's lots to do, but the content is mostly similar in doing so and there is absolutely no informed way to plan power growth. So making all this 'stacked' extra damage, to me, is just a completely unnecessary additonal complication, built for the players at the top to add 'build complexity' but does nothing because they do more than enough damage in the first place. It doesn't help the 'middle-class' players who can't quite kill those SP enemies to get the damage scaling in the first place... In other words, these stackable bonuses are only useful once you already don't really need them.
Note for context, I'm a solo player and feel this is particularly where the problems come out, in group play your gaps can be covered by others.
