We all know about intensity. It increases your rubble size, makes aura spells (nvm it’s just resistance) stronger and it gives you a couple more ticks of a status effect.
I am mainly interested in the status effect part.
There are quite a few builds that have a damaging DoT effect. Most of these effects have a 5% impact damage for a certain duration, with the strongest (obtainable) being probably plasma’s status effect with a 10% impact damage, with 3 base ticks for an additional 30% damage.
So basically investing in intensity, when you’re using a build that includes a damaging status effect, grants you a percentage increase in your damage. Power just gives a flat amount of extra damage. (based on the power scaling of an attack)
some dot builds will run a little intensity, but it’s returns are just too low. the only real use intensity has is honestly increasing how much your Aura/Focus increases. i’ve seen some nasty juggernaut Iron Leg builds that have lots of intensity for a giant health boost.
also, most sources of intensity just give a lot of it to where you only really need one and then you’re set to go.
watch as the intensity rework is going to get nerfed because ‘it allows thermo fist users to spam attacks much faster than they were supposed to do, meaning that they can now reach maximum heat within a couple seconds of engaging in combat. Thermo fist is supposed to get stronger the longer the fight goes on, so that is why we will be nerfing intensity.’
i use intensity for this reason intensity is actually more efficient than power for dps I only use 73 power and 50 intensity on thermo zerker and I hit pretty hard because of the extra ticks my initial hit only do just shy of 200 dmg but the extra tick damage bring it closer to 300 with only 50 intensity. but its just an underused stat because of the math u have to do its not as simple as just applying an extra powerful scroll to ur gear
While I do agree that attack cooldown changes is going to be trouble to balance, having a stat that’s only useful in half of all builds is just bad design.
Personally, I’d I were designing the intensity rework, I’d have it work like this: the player’s intensity is put into a “pool” for their moves, starting with the lowest stat requirement move and moving up from there. When the move’s “intensity pool” is filled, the stat begins filling up the next pool.
It would cap off reducing a move’s cooldown by 20% at a filled pool. The pool’s requirement would also probably scale.
the only reason intensity feels bad rn as is, is because of the nerf they did to the way it effected blindness. I’d instead let scale with blindness but put a cd on how often blindness can be applied for light, snow, etc because i really think the cd of moves should not be messed with. thats super wonky
as mentioned, it’s simply more math to do and power also increases dot so a lot of people don’t even consider it
however among the guys who will metamance the shit out of this, an important consideration is how often you are refreshing the duration of your dots. For example, poison magic’s 20 tick dot means you’re refreshing it almost constantly if you’ve got some modicum of talent. Thus, intensity is actually not that useful for a poison user if you’re not trying to be stupid with clouds.
magma and acid (10 tick dot) are similarly long enough that intensity isn’t that useful for their dot damage. The most useful you might imagine are seared and scorched (3 tick dot) and in fact you will see a lot of intensity plasma thermo users. It’s also useful on 5 tick dots like burning, bleeding, and scalded (on builds that can stack bleed, intensity is extra useful since you’ll stack instead of refreshing, but I’m not really familiar with that).
Overall there’s a sweet spot after which you’re refreshing dot too much to make running more intensity useful, and it depends on your build, attack speed, and skill
(also I would like to run enough intensity in the future that power shot has no cooldown that would be nice)
reworking some status effect isnt the worst idea but also were going to be having alot more skills coming out this year especially since Galaga is helping. so i think it will make up for the lack of stat diversity with move diversity
