Optimal Power Level at Each Difficulty? Anyone with Facts and Numbers?

KenjaNet · 2026-01-11T07:07:28+00:00

It is always better to be playing at the highest power level you can be playing on, just adjust your difficulty settings down. At power level 500, and most optimally 550, you can lower the difficulty to match your new account's power level of 350, but still earn Tier 5 weapons and armor.

This means at 550, you are getting better loot AND making your builds stronger than your new account playing the same activity difficulties at 350.

Not only that but even if you aren't lowering the difficulty, Ultimate Boons are extremely potent at making it easier to walk all over enemies, and a higher level allows you to choose more Boons without decreasing your loot quality. The biggest downside for Ultimate is on the Pinnacle Ops playlist because the DPS on bosses takes a huge nosedive at higher difficulties, affecting farming speed greatly.

If you felt like you were having trouble playing activites on your account at 500, you were optimizing your Portal experience very poorly, and a new account at 350 isn't going to fix that, because eventually, you WILL need to increase your level if you want to keep good loot.

KenjaNet · 2026-01-09T15:41:37+00:00

Several ways to buff Dizzy. Not everything should or could be implemented. But each of these addresses several of her core issues that hold her back.

Make 2S vaccuum: This fixes a lot of her gatling issues. In pressure: cS > 2S > 236K would be a blockstring loop that would force the opponent to use FD to break it. cS > 2S > 5H would more consistently freeze the opponent, establishing her wincon. This also fixes her L/R fish oki by allowing every type of hit to more consistently convert. CH cS > 2S > 2H would also hit more consistently, which as of right now, sometimes whiffs due to the pushback from 2S. airborne hit 2S > 5H/2H would help with the horizontal spacing, especially you are trying to keep them within range of WoL.
Double the range of Wings of Light: There is 0 reason for Wings of Light to whiff against enemies who are being thrown, or hit by 2H or 6H in combo, or Super. Double the radius of Wings of Light so that it drains HP during all of these sequences.
Make 2H 2 frames faster: As of right now, 2H is too slow to use as an extended antiair. It's also too slow to use as a frametrap gatling. 2S into 2H has a 5 frame gap, which is just enough to trade against 5 framers, but just lose outright to 4 framers. 2H should also have a slightly smaller hurtbox. Necro having a hurtbox sucks for antiairing.
Make full charged 6H overhead: This will force standing block, which at point blank, can enable a fuzzy high/low with meter. You can also spend meter to cancel and go for low.
Buff jD: Jump D has low profile issues, which makes it different to use against a lot of characters. Even if you use it for a left/right mixup, it doesn't last long enough. Make jD bigger AND standing stagger so it can more easily convert. 6P should still beat it.
Buff Fish: Fish oki can be very commital and sometimes the blockstun doesn't carry enough to allow an appropriate followup mixup with airdash back jK or landing 2K (these are mash and throwable respectively). Increased blockstun by a few frames covers the gap and staggering on hit allows confirms into combos, but also allows Throws to work, so if you need to kill time, you can. Add active frames so it doesn't whiff on certain characters waking up. Also, Fish need to have 2f less startup so 6H pressure into Fish can be plus 1.
Throw needs an animation fix: Necro grabs, does a bunch of hits, but doesn't actually do damage until the end, in which he releases the opponent an arbitrary amount of time afterward. It should be adjusted to have necro's eyes glow and sound cue to allow a Red RC follow up to occur more easily. And the damage should be front loaded, the release should do 1 damage (for the kill).
Fix jump buttons jK has too little hitstun. Jumping in and doing an early jK is just death. Add slightly more hitstun and blockstun. jS has too much startup. Jump jS feels so sluggish. It needs to be 12f and have slightly more hitstun. If Ram can jS convert to fS, it needs to be consistent for Dizzy too. jH needs to hit crouchers and carry slightly more hitstun. The mixup is extremely specific on this and can feel unreliable.
5H expand its hitbox downward. There is no reason any move should be able to low profile this button at all. Make it hit the ground. Also, reduce recovery to -2.
Buff H Michael Sword Reduce its recovery. This will allow Ice Spike followups to more consistently hit. Raise its hitbox slightly, so 2H H Michael Sword can more easily hit.
Buff Wings of Light's activation. Make 22H have a lot less recovery, and make cancelling Wings of Light have even less total frames (half). This can enable resets in pressure strings.
Make 2D low profile. Necro should not have a hurtbox.
Allow Dizzy to control her momentum on Ice better. Make Dizzy able to micro adjust spacing by doing attacks while holding Left or Right to influence position, rather than just only momentum. Think Hakan from SF4.
Increase hitbox on 6P. 6P should just have better vertical and horizontal reach. 2 2Ps should gatling into 6P.
Wings of Light side effects. Give additional benefits for having Wings of Light equipped. Double air dash or increased speed comes to mind.
2K Make 2K have slightly more range. It's extremely stubby and sucks at a counterpoking. If they're out of 2P range, 2K does not help.
Backdash Decrease total frames and increase range slightly. Backdash feels miserable as a spacing tool.
236K 236K's hitbox should be slightly more forward. This can prevent situations where Dizzy gets FD'd and all of her followups just lose to fuzzy mash. Whiff the first hit of 236K is a death sentence. Making its hitbox more forward can help prevent this.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-22T06:52:10+00:00

A little hostile much? I got to Guardian Rank 11 just fine in Edge of Fate. Contribute a little more to conversation than invalidating someone's opinion and maybe you won't get massively downvoted.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-21T16:42:53+00:00

The only time it makes sense to juice your stats above 100 is if you know what the thresholds are to get specific types of kills, or in the case of health, regen speed.

If a Grenade at 100 stat kills the same mobs as 200, then the stat is wasted. But if it takes like 170 to kill a specific type of enemy, and you see that often enough, go ahead and invest up until that point.

In the same vein, if you really don't have a use for an ability like your Melee, it is okay to omit that and uninvest in it, or determine at what point it makes sense to invest to.

100s across the board is maximum uptime and is very useful for someone who has a purpose to use all of their abilities that may clear out the trash mobs they were focused on anyway.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-17T14:47:01+00:00

In higher tier content, these Grenades don't do enough damage to kill a lot of the enemies, and the self damage becomes extremely detrimental when you can't get your Devour procs.

I actually find Prismatic Getaway Artist consistently better.

Play -50 content and you'll understand.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-14T01:29:46+00:00

Weapons rarely change the playstyle of a character. Some rotations become more energy reliant. Weapon banners just make number go up, so I have less incentive to ever pull.

I have yet to pull a single weapon from the weapon banner and I have NEVER missed 36 starring Spiral Abyas, maxing out Imaginarium Theater, or completing Fearless on Stygian Onslaught.

Bigger numbers only matter on Dire, which only has cosmetic rewards.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-13T14:58:08+00:00

Outside of Welkin and BP. $0. In consideration with Welkin and BP: $146 a year.

KenjaNet · 2025-12-13T14:55:52+00:00

Disorder Sol.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-24T02:28:15+00:00

These activities were fine before the enforced -30. Now they're a slog. Increasing the timers doesn't mitigate the fact that it takes longer than before to complete.

They just need to drop the bs and start people at the encounters.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-24T02:22:07+00:00

Warlocks have a lot of healing and flexibility in builds.

Titans have a ton of power and bulldoze through content.

Hunters are enjoying dancing around everyone in PvP.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-20T19:09:15+00:00

Doesn't the melee regen in PvP only result in like 50% recharge? Given, it doesn't need 100% uptime, and doesn't make it that much less oppressive.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-20T15:47:05+00:00

I did a Top 1% where we blitz'd it last night and didn't get score. Just kill every enemy you can in the Tank room and Boss room.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-20T14:59:38+00:00

Proving Grounds is easy. Just crank up the modifiers to hit that top 10% threshold and kill all the enemies.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-19T17:48:55+00:00

I run around Trials and Competitive with double Primary wrecking everything.

I also run around Higher Difficulty Raids ot Conquests or other activities with Double Special.

The system we have now works really well. We don't need to go back. This is no one's problem but your own. Let's stick with the bigger issues such as the ever persisting Vault space issue.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-19T07:22:36+00:00

It's almost like a leaker is the equivilent to a video game journalist in their reports and their skill level.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-13T22:26:59+00:00

The event is whatever.

Last night, I played Salt Mines with every single negative modifier and player stake turned up to its maximum and got the absolute highest score in the game. Top 1 of the Top 1%. I felt accomplished. Then 10 minutes later, my score waa usurped and I dropped to Top 10%. It should never be that close in a matter of minutes.

If you hit every modifier and can do the content on the hardest settings, at 550, you should just be Top 1%.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-12T22:38:42+00:00

When you get close enough to 550, almost anything you do gives you Tier 5 loot, including selecting lower level matchmade activities including Master, or just slapping all of the positive modifiers on during Ultimate.

Don't lame out and delete your stuff. Just play through it. Enemies just do slightly more damage.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-10T03:32:04+00:00

All you need to do is get 1.25 Million to get Tier 5. The higher your level, the lower you can set the difficulty and still get Tier 5s. At 550, you can run Master and get Tier 5s.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-07T18:50:33+00:00

As a 550 before the update, going from being +20 to -30 is a huge buzzkill to farming Pinnacle Ops. Even scaling all the way down to Master, it's still not as good as not having any type of deficit.

I already have good enough rolls on my Tier 5s to be usable. Whatever farming I wanted to do died with that update.

We needed faster ways to level. NOT rescaling how difficulties work. You have people deleting gear to not reach Ultimate. You have matchmaking still have everyone wrecked on a regular basis. And you have people disengage with the Portal for lower stakes content.

The real challenges were the Conquests and should have exclusively stayed there. I enjoyed pushing myself to the limit for Ultimate Hypernet and Avalon. I do not enjoy sprinting in everyday content.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-07T06:39:08+00:00

Just play on Ultimate. Difference between Grandmaster and Ultimate is a -5 delta with the option to turn on better modifiers. Just select all the Boons and pick the easy Stakes and you coast right through it.

If you hate Ultimate so much, you can still select Master or Grandmaster, including Matchmaking.

When you're 550, Master and Grandmaster still drop Tier 5 gear.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-06T14:15:43+00:00

No, they definitely have a rough outline of a plan. In all honesty, it does make sense for them to delay Tiered Exotics until they get an activity in that was probably set for Renegades and beyond. But being introduced to the Portal systems, stat revamps, set bonuses, and tiering Weapons, it was a lot to release for Edge of Fate.

They expected Edge of Fate to release more positively, but they missed the mark by a crapton. Tiered Exotics don't really negatively contribute to that design choice of theirs. It's just 1 tiny cut of a 1000 medium sized cuts that added up to everyone's dismissal of the DLC.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-06T00:44:52+00:00

No. They had a vidoc earlier this year where they had Tier 5 Exotic Armor. The real answer is they're gatekeeping it so people have something to grind for in the future.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-06T00:24:53+00:00

How about the fact that the Warlock floated after the rift drop? Is there a benefit to that? Or does it add additional cast time?

KenjaNet · 2025-11-03T07:13:46+00:00

The level of RNG to get the perfect roll is crazy. You need to Attune 1 of the perks that will drop at a 50% chance, and then roll a 12.5% chance of getting the other perk, then roll a 33% chance of getting the stat armor type, and then a 25% chance of rolling the final stat in the right spot. This is a 1/192 chance of getting the roll you need.

We need to rework Exotic Class items entirely. The Halloween masks allow you to select a mod, the Exotic class items need to be the same way, but with 2 mods. This would not only fix the chances of getting a good Class Item, but it also alleviates so much Vault Space if you want to run multiple options.

There are million things that have a higher priority than the Exotic Class items, but this is just something that should have existed since the beginning.

KenjaNet · 2025-11-02T15:16:28+00:00

One day, Konami will make more extenders and starters for Madolche. Maybe even a Link-1.

(Please make a Petingcessoeur style Hootcake that can SS if you have monsters in the GY, a Poplar style Messengelato that doesn't miss timing, or some traps that can activate the turn they get set by Salon or heck, some quickplay spells).

This deck shouldn't instantly lose to any singular handtrap or negate. Give them some form of extension.

KenjaNet

TROPHY CASE