How to solve the damage cap problem on Volt

[alfaomega04]

After seeing the gif posted by DE where the damage cap was removed and it was basically game breaking, I thought how this could be implemented without breaking the game.

The problem with the way things currently work, is that once the damage cap is reached, the ability is basically over the stun effect is also removed. This makes his ability to crowd control unreliable as it is dependant on how many enemies it hit, which enemies it hit, and the level of the enemies being affected. Not only that, but it also makes crowd control builds somewhat useless as they would not be able to be balanced towards range and duration in a significant manner. The result is that this leaves Volt in spot where his main ability is neither a powerful damage dealing ability, nor able to crowd control reliably.

So this is the solution: leave the damage cap, BUT once it has been reached, only the stun effect would persist until its full duration is over, without any more damage being dealt. 

With this change implemented, it would not become gamebreaking since it would only be able deal a set amount of damage regardless of range, duration, level, or number of enemies affected. Most importantly, this change would make his CC extremely predictable and controllable, thus reliable, as it would not be based on the damage cap. This would allow players to build around his discharge and its ability to crowd control without having to worry about the random aspects when the damage cap is tied to its duration.

This would not only fix the problem of the unreliability of his crowd control, but it would also allow players to mod for a damage build without breaking the game. One would simply recast discharge if more damage is desired but the damage cap had been reached but the stun effect was still in effect.

 

 

The reason why I thought this would the best change to this ability is because when I personally build for CC on abilities, I don't care for how much damage is dishing out, I just want the CC to be reliable and know exactly what it will do. So I figured the problem wasn't the cap, it was that the cap is tied directly to the duration. If the two are disconnected and able to stand individually, this would fix the problem without allowing the lack of a damage cap on discharge to be able to deal ridiculous and unintended damage numbers.

Thoughts? feedback?

Edited December 8, 2017 by alfaomega04
Grammar, clean up

[OvisCaedo]

I don't think the damage IS the problem they have with it. The CC is. The damage being shown off was really not impressive, it was just that everything was being stunlocked from far away.

[--F--NerevarCM]

Like @OvisCaedo said, the damage is not the problem

The CC and range is. Volt was hitting enemies 1km away. Even 5 seconds after the cast, enemies are still being hit.

[xXxYolomaster420xXx]

If you want to know what the new Discharge would have looked like, go to the Simulacrum with a high duration high range build (you will have negative strength here) and spawn 20 max level corrupted bombards. Use Discharge. Since you will deal 1 damage per tick you'll never reach the damage cap and therefore utilize the maximum possible duration. You can stunlock everything in a 40m radius for over half a minute. If you time your next Discharge well they'll get CC'd again for an additional 30+ seconds without being able to take a single step. It's actually pretty ridiculous. 

AFAIK nothing was changed with the new Discharge except for the removal of the damage cap and an increase in its DPS. Since its range was untouched this would be a pretty accurate recreation of what things would have looked like.

Edited December 8, 2017 by xXxYolomaster420xXx

[Narubion]

I believe the other way around would be more effective: 
Let there be a damage cap after which the stun ends. This way, you can reliably stun enemies while your casting (or long enough to save your squishy self) and enough damage for days.

Regarding the range and damage: The range is not a problem, as Volt cannot move while casting his 4. Banshee has a far greater range with her 4+ Augment but because she can't move its only good in specific situations. Ember, on the other hand, has a smaller radius but can move while world on fire is activated.

Volts Discharge damage highly relies upon the number of enemies grouped together. Against only a few enemies (or many but not grouped) his damage is not particularly high, which allows him to stun solo enemies for a longer duration. 

So a cap for his stun (based on his damage output + a fixed time) would allow for a lot of damage and consider the cc capabilities. Players who want to use his cc more, would need to massively reduce his power strength (and therefore his 1 and 3 at the same time).

[alfaomega04]

Ahh, now it makes more sense, I thought they were getting super high damage number. 

I guess they could still separate the two mechanics (cc timer, and dmg cap) and maybe nerf his cc, since having a nerfed cc discharge be more reliable would be better than having one a discharge that might sometimes provide good cc, and sometimes not.

[SpacewalkerX]

8 hours ago, xXxYolomaster420xXx said:

If you want to know what the new Discharge would have looked like, go to the Simulacrum with a high duration high range build (you will have negative strength here) and spawn 20 max level corrupted bombards. Use Discharge. Since you will deal 1 damage per tick you'll never reach the damage cap and therefore utilize the maximum possible duration. You can stunlock everything in a 40m radius for over half a minute. If you time your next Discharge well they'll get CC'd again for an additional 30+ seconds without being able to take a single step. It's actually pretty ridiculous. 

AFAIK nothing was changed with the new Discharge except for the removal of the damage cap and an increase in its DPS. Since its range was untouched this would be a pretty accurate recreation of what things would have looked like.

isn't that the same as a duration - range avalanche frost?

[Sasuda]

I'm not 100% sure on this but, by the sounds of it the problem doesn't seem to be the damage, but rather the arcing between targets? Isn't the damage (and stun) cap a problem since it will infinitely arc between targets and build up? Is there a way to limit the ability to arc? Like having a duration that it can arc for or something?

[Mudfam]

It would be good to know what it is exactly DE has a problem with. The duration? The damage? The range? The arc chains? The video is vague, and it's not like we can't already do that with other frames.

12 base seconds of hard CC is too much. Uncapped crowd scaling damage for 12 seconds base is (arguably) too much. The arcs used to be a problem, but they were already limited and also only have a base range of 4 metres.

My proposed solution was to leave in this effective 4 second duration, but to allow those 4 seconds to be reset in localised bursts / arcs on any target that is killed (not by Discharge) or shocked (Volt's 1) before those 4 seconds expire, up to the total duration.

In practice simply pressing 4 would basically have the same effect as it does now, but consistently. However, it opens up a sort of tactical mini-game where Volt and his teammates can pick off or shock individual targets to keep the CC and damage going longer on small local clusters of enemies, with a 4 second window. It promotes very active and tactical play and creates a meaningful synergy with Shock.

[Tsukinoki]

9 hours ago, SpacewalkerX said:

isn't that the same as a duration - range avalanche frost?

Nope.

First is that Avalanche lasts 8 seconds base, discharge 12.
Second is that Avalanche covers 15 meters base, discharge 20.
Third is that after casting Avalanche doesn't CC any new enemies that enter the area, discharge does.  After all, each target becomes a spot that sends out constant electrical procs to any enemies that wander nearby stunning them repeatedly until they stop being an arc-trap.  With how the pathing works, and how a lot of maps only provide so many corridors for enemies to travel down, and how high you can get the range of Volt it becomes very easy to hit Discharge one time and hard CC all the enemies that are currently in the area, and then proceed to hard CC any enemies that continue to try to enter the area until the duration is up.

A negative strength max range+duration volt would be able to CC an area 50 meters radius (plus chaining from electrical sources such as consoles) for 24 seconds.  That's without the storm helmet or narrow minded.
And remember, unlike pretty much every other CC this isn't just CCing the enemies that are already there, that is CCing any enemies who enter the area and get within 8 meters of the original enemies (which lets be honest will happen the majority of the time).

Edited December 9, 2017 by Tsukinoki

[Mudfam]

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

hard CC all the enemies that are currently in the area, and then proceed to hard CC any enemies that continue to try to enter the area until the duration is up.

This isn't really accurate, the tesla coil effect that stuns new enemies in range of others only lasts 4 seconds, not for the entire duration. They also put other restrictions in place so that it wouldn't continue chaining from enemy to enemy. For a time these restrictions didn't exist and it could indeed CC the entire map.

In practice it's more comparable to Rhino's stomp, but in its current form it's a mess of contradictory mechanics that work against eachother, cancelling eachother out and creating inconsistent behaviour. Crowd scaling damage that is capped anyway, a duration of 12 seconds that actually only lasts between 4 and 5 regardless of duration mods, a chain CC effect that doesn't actually chain...

DE made a complete mess wtih this ability's design, then left it untouched for over a year. Now it seems they're looking for a quick fix while trying to avoid backlash from a percevied nerf due to the ability's mechanics being falsely advertised as better than they are for such a long time. Just look at what they wrote in their release notes:

Added a minimum Duration for enemies affected by Discharge under the 'coil' CC effect. This could allow for possible modding diversity knowing minimum Duration for the 'coil' CC effect won't fall below 4 seconds.

It has nothing to do with modding or duration, and everything to do with the broken damage cap mechanic. But they won't admit this, and tried to put a more positive (and completely false) spin on it.

The ability clearly needs a major revision to its mechanics. The fact that some people will perceive it as a nerf may be inevitable, but they need to just deal with it and we can help by informing anyone who misunderstands it. Even if they simply reduce the base duration to 4 seconds but remove the cap it will be a considerable overall buff..

Edited December 9, 2017 by Mudfam

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, Mudfam said:

This isn't really accurate, the tesla coil effect that stuns new enemies in range of others only lasts 4 seconds, not for the entire duration. They also put other restrictions in place so that it wouldn't continue chaining from enemy to enemy. For a time these restrictions didn't exist and it could indeed CC the entire map.

The person I replied to was replying to another comment that was talking about what just removing the damage cap would have done to Discharge, and my description was what would have happened.
Also while there is restrictions in the ability chaining infinitely now, enemies that walk near an enemy affected by Discharge are stun-locked in place from constant electrical procs until the initial enemy breaks free (which depending on armor values can take longer than 4 seconds).

So while you are accurate in describing the ability and how it functions currently(on anything without armor), it would work like how I was describing if DE had made the change of just removing the damage cap from the ability and did nothing else.

I do agree that Discharge needs some reworking, but just removing the damage cap would be stupid.

At this point I think that DE should just scrap discharge and make a new ultimate from scratch that has better synergies with his kit and with itself.
So far DE hasn't done a good job with discharge.  First its too strong and 1 cast wipes out entire maps.  Then its just meh that no one uses.  And now its even worse.
They should just scrap it all together.

[xXxYolomaster420xXx]

13 hours ago, SpacewalkerX said:

isn't that the same as a duration - range avalanche frost?

Yep, though Discharge would last a bit longer. The difference is that Frost is almost exclusively a defense-based CC tank. Volt is not. Volt is a high mobility, high offense frame whose every ability, even electric shield, involves dealing more damage. For a damage dealing frame like that to have this extent of an AoE lockdown would be pretty ridiculous. He's already a jack of all trades that can solo nearly any mission except spy without much issue. New Discharge would push him to a whole another level.

The damage cap is the only thing preventing current Discharge from acting like the dev-tested Discharge. From what I can see either it needs another cap like with range which would suck or the ability needs to be completely scrapped and replaced with a totally different, more synergistic one.

Edited December 9, 2017 by xXxYolomaster420xXx

[Mudfam]

3 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

The person I replied to was replying to another comment that was talking about what just removing the damage cap would have done to Discharge, and my description was what would have happened.
Also while there is restrictions in the ability chaining infinitely now, enemies that walk near an enemy affected by Discharge are stun-locked in place from constant electrical procs until the initial enemy breaks free (which depending on armor values can take longer than 4 seconds).

So while you are accurate in describing the ability and how it functions currently(on anything without armor), it would work like how I was describing if DE had made the change of just removing the damage cap from the ability and did nothing else.

I know. And this is still not accurate. The tesla coil effect only lasts up to 4 seconds, regardless of the damage cap or anything else. This is what the "DURATION 4", which is not affected by mods, under Volt's Discharge means. It's concidental that Discharge has a minimum 4 second CC duration as of update 22.5, that is not what I am referring to.

 

3 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

I do agree that Discharge needs some reworking, but just removing the damage cap would be stupid.

At this point I think that DE should just scrap discharge and make a new ultimate from scratch that has better synergies with his kit and with itself.
So far DE hasn't done a good job with discharge.  First its too strong and 1 cast wipes out entire maps.  Then its just meh that no one uses.  And now its even worse.
They should just scrap it all together.

Indeed removing the damage cap would need to be accompanied by an appropriate rebalance of the ability. It wouldn't be very difficult to do, but I suspect DE is hesitant because while the damage cap's detrimental effects are not well understood by many, a nerf to numbers such as duration and damage will be very evident to everyone. I hope DE can have a little faith in their players and get the job done already.

Personally I still wish a more interactive element was added, as I think large untargeted AoE CC or damage don't have a positive gameplay value.