Cailener1234, post: 3445, member: 548 wrote:

In this thread, I'll be discussing possible ideas/adjustments in order to bring Devastation & the 4 Elemental Penetration stats to an acceptable and worthy place in the current builds for Evolve.

First, the suggestion for Devastation. This stat has been adjusted at least 2-3 times and just hasn't quite hit that sweet spot, the community has certainly had a lot of ideas and thoughts on to improve it. I would recommend removing it completely from the Commando tree, leaving the only ways to stack Devastation with the Juggernaut Set & the additional exotic from Junk Loot. Second, it would adjust the multiplier from .1 to .3 as explained in the description of the 5-Piece Set.

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Devastation would turn into an automatic proc (similar to GA with Inspired Action that procs Inspiration on a 20% chance) of either Burn It Down (AoE Target DoT) or It Burns! (Single Target DoT). In addition, it would provide a damage increase % based on a multiplier of .5 for the stat, as listed below in an Excel Sheet.

For the next section of the Elemental Penetration Mods, I recommend using this page as a reference to how the Elemental Criticals currently are:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Elemental_damage[/URL]

The first Elemental Stat we'll look at is Elemental Penetration: Cold, this stat would increase the multiplier of the increased damage debuff on the target, using elemental damage 100 as the example. Duration would last for 6 seconds.

(CORRECTION: The Value added to Multiplier of .2 is multiplying the Possible Value by a multiplier of 0.15, which means the increase is 16.5% to the 20% to the example below)

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Next, we'll focus on Elemental Penetration: Heat which will give an increased flat damage to the Heat DoT, using 750 as the basis of this example. Using the multiplier of 40, this can obviously readjusted as testing of this is explored but best to go big at first then scale back if needed. This tick would hit every 2 seconds, the duration lasting for 6 seconds.

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Following this, we'll go to Elemental Penetration: Acid which currently gives a 75% Critical Hit Vulnerability. With how things are right now with the ease of Critical Chance to reach a hard max, reviewing possible divisors and providing a Critical Damage Vulnerability would make this debuff quite powerful, as shown below. Duration would be 3 seconds.

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So when the debuff applies and the above stat is present, it will read as such:
75% Critical Hit Vulnerability
22% Critical Damage Vulnerability

Finally, we look at Elemental Penetration: Electricity.

This debuff was a bit hamstrung by SOE already. How it works right now is this, +75% Glancing Blow Hit Chance in which Glancing Blow'd attacks are attacks that do 60% less damage. It technically says on the buff box that it's 75% Trivial Hit Chance, which is incorrect. To be a bit creative, I suggest adding a new stat that is specific to this debuff called Miracle Armor. This stat would increase the chance that any damage output on a target would be fully absorbed by their armor. Duration would be 6 seconds.

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The debuff would read as follows:
+75% Glancing Blow Hit Increase
+22% Miracle Armor Hit Increase

Ultimately, Miracle Armor is a theoretical suggestion and can be toned down. Just thinking of additional ways to have the damage output of your target be further reduced for those 6 seconds completely stopped or significantly reduced in addition to the Glancing Blow which should be relooked at to work too.

No additional adjustments would be made. Durations & recourses would stay the same. As always, this information can be subject to change but I feel these overall adjustments would give these stats a fresh coat of paint and have us rethink about.

I completely agree with the points you’ve made here and really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into laying this out. The suggestions for Devastation and Elemental Penetrations are well thought out and could definitely bring fresh value to build diversity.

I’d love to be able to remove the shared GCD of burn down and it burns that way we can double apply the dot and apply it faster, this might be an easy change to give the heavy peeps some love and be able to combat the fast cleanse options available easily to everyone.

From my perspective, one important distinction is how these mechanics perform in PvE vs. PvP. In PvE, they’re performing very well overall. I mean 4 heavy weapons commandos in any group content will clear faster than any group.

However, in PvP the picture changes significantly due to the defensive stacking advantages available to melee focused specs.

Melee builds benefit from substantial damage reduction, coming not only from melee focused enhancements but also from advantages in the Commando tree that happen to apply to melee as well. While a ranged user could technically go heavy and branch into TKM, most of the enhancements and benefits there are melee oriented, leaving ranged focused builds with wasted points. By contrast, a melee player going TKM and Commando minimizes waste and gets the best of both trees.

On top of that, melee gets access to an extremely strong defensive and mobility toolkit including the ability to break roots with three separate abilities (Narrow Escape, Burst Run, and Sprint Stim) plus ranged “thrown” snares and roots. This means the supposed “distance advantage” for ranged isn’t really a practical benefit in actual PvP combat, apart from specific edge cases like running a Dire.

Circling back, if your devestation changes, elemental changes are implemented along with perhaps an adjustment to it burns and burn down GCD that’d be an amazing place to start and build off of.

Love the suggestion Cail, really great stuff.

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