BotsCombos: Berserk too powerful?

I'm wondering what the opinion is now that we've seen it in use?

Particularly with Adrenaline Masters with max Weapon Speed, the ability to keep this combo going makes it very powerful.

Should I up the adrenaline usage? The defaults are supposedly:

AdrenalineCost: 100
Duration: 30

That means 100 adren is required (I don't think we should change this so much) and the duration for 100 adren would be 30 seconds. Should we drop the duration to 25 or 20? I think 15 might be *too* much.

Or, should it be set up to change the fire rate less than it already does? If I've done my work right, a player with no Weapon Speed will get the equivalent of max Weapon Speed while Berserk is running. We could (without code modification, actually) bump that down a tad (BTW, don't get me started on what "50% faster" actually means, because it does *not* mean twice as fast - that would be "100% faster"). If my math is right, a max weapon speed person berserking is firing 125% faster (which is actually "50% faster than 50% faster") than someone with no weapon speed. If we wanted to bump that down to roughly 100% faster, we'd make the no weapon speed person berserking fire as fast as if they had WS 30.

Get an infinite weapon (I love the link for this) and fire off berserk as an Adren Master with Surge and you're on your way, particularly if you trigger the triple.

Even non-AMs seem to think it might be a bit over powered ... what do *you* think?

I would suspect that what would be fair would be to change the mod from the default of "0.5" to "0.3" (as per my above) and move the Duration to 25 (which would require code change, but if I'm going to change that code, you can bet I'm going to do my best to make that configurable as well).

Perhaps we should stack the combos for different classes.

WMs do benefit from berserk, obviously, but I've never been able to sustain it for extreme periods of time. An AM could, though. Maybe we stunt it for AMs? And, likewise, we stunt booster for WMs.

Or something like that. That way, your class would have a combo that patches its biggest deficiency every once in a while.

(Does that make sense?)

We *could* put class specific code into the mod. However, part of the reason why it's coded the way it is is so that it fixes *existing bugs* in the core code, and could be more portable for non-RPG gametypes (or even non DruidsRPG servers).

The thing is I think, because of their way to make adren, booster also favors the AM more as well. However, I think the greatest equalizer there is that booster shuts down if it has no work (can't increase health any more than your SuperMax and your shield is maxed too).

Mystic had a Berserk running for a couple of waves today I think ... and he's WM ... so while it's more likely for AMs, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility for a high level WM.

And maybe the issue with it being extendable is more of a "high level" problem rather than a class problem? Oh now there's an evil thought ...

Make the combos eat adren faster for higher level players.

BotFodder wrote:

Make the combos eat adren faster for higher level players.

I like the idea at first blush. Then, I'm thinking...we already have enough here. Since we (Dru) made the decision to give lowbies a ramp up, we've put in plenty to gear toward them already.

My solution, if the thinking is that it lasts too long (and I'm not sure I agree 100%), is that it eat adren slightly faster.

The reason I don't agree 100% is that I don't think we should be limiting abilities based on the exceptional players. We should gear them toward the average.

BotFodder wrote:

Make the combos eat adren faster for higher level players.

OK... my $0.97 worth (got to account for cosmic inflation, ya know

). It seems to me that higher level players should be better at things like adren and artifact usage. And that LA players, esp higher level LA players should benefit from the supposed experience at using adren, and have lower adren costs. (say level 150 uses 10% less adren per time unit, level 160 uses 15% less, etc. just to pull some numbers out of the air) So this actually goes against what you are suggesting.

BTW... consider this... my adren was maxed ages ago, and I am spending points to wrap up buying those stupid skills hardly nobody buys. What is a player to do when they reach this point, where there is nothing left to buy?? Personally, I would say either the character stops leveling, or perhaps things open up which were closed off, like vamp and regen being made available to LA players, surge and such for LW, etc. Of course, that latter once again means that the ballance shifts even more towards the higher level players, which means I am actually in favor of saying "Time to start a new character". And it has another advantage... we stop needing bigger and badder monsters which blow the low levels away, or needing to crank the AI. Or nerf weapons/skills/artifacts. And on top of it, we do not end up with the obscene spread in levels in a game.