Goat

I was recently testing a new Seismic Blast build on Brainstorm, and noticed an odd issue: when using the Empowered version of Rock Shards, the power would occasionally go on a really long cooldown. In my build it should have roughly a three second recharge, and the base recharge of the power is only 8 seconds — in this case, however, the power would go on cooldown for anywhere from 15 to 20 seconds. I went to check to see if this behavior was also present on Live, and it definitely is. I think this issue might be new; I've played this Seismic Blaster a lot, and never had this come up before. The behavior does, however, seems to be very inconsistent; sometimes I'll get the bug 3-4 times in a row, sometimes Rock Shards will briefly display a very long recharge before snapping back to a shorter one, sometimes I won't be able to replicate the bug at all for minutes on end. The length of the bugged cooldown also seems to be inconsistent, even with no change in recharge buffs or slotting. I feel like it *might* be happening when I use a normal Rock Shards, get Seismic Shockwaves while the power is recharging, and then immediately use the Empowered version as soon as it's recharged, but the bug happens so unreliably that it's difficult to be sure. All the tests were done in the Rikti War Zone (both on Brainstorm on the test server and Everlasting on Live), against a variety of enemies — I had it trigger on Vanguard training dummies, Rikti, Crey, and Arachnos. The character is a Seismic/Devices Blaster, and I haven't had the chance to see if Seismic Blast is having the same issue on other Archetypes. If anyone else is able to replicate this bug or has any ideas about what might be causing it, I'd love to hear.

This is with cooldown indicators. The actual recharge time of Kuji-In Rin on Live is about 59 seconds, and the actual recharge time of it on Test with an identical build and recharge values is 2 minutes and 10 seconds. The listed recharge when right-clicking the power is 2 minutes 10 seconds on both Live and Test, but the actual recharge of the power when factoring in global recharge buffs is different.

First off, thank you to the Homecoming team for putting so much work into this game! I love the majority of the changes here, on paper. I'm going to focus in on the Ninjitsu changes right now, though, since that's what I've done testing on so far. First off, stealth crits! The new changes seem to be working properly, with powers having a higher chance to crit after being out of combat for eight seconds. Eight seconds feels MUCH better than twenty, making it an aspect of the set that's relevant far more frequently. Hooray! The 30% crit chance on AoE attacks feels much worse than on Live, but overall I'd still say it's a big improvement. Second off, saying Shinobi-Iri's buff has been "moved to Kuji-In Rin" seems disingenuous, since (as others have noted) the values are completely different. At level 50, unenhanced, Shinobi Iri on Live provides +66.00% jump speed, +270.00% jump height, and +60.00% run speed. At level 50, unenhanced, Kuji-In Rin on the Test server provides +35.00% to jump speed, jump height, and run speed. That's roughly half the value for jump and run speeds, and a TREMENDOUS reduction to jump height. My first thought was that the movement buffs from Kuji-In Rin might stack with multiple applications, but the power seems to be ignoring global recharge boosts on Test, which was not listed in the patch notes. Kuji-In Rin has a base recharge of 3m20s on both Live and Test. Given identical characters with 185% global recharge (including Hasten): On Test, Kuji-In Rin's recharge with 53% slotted recharge (one level 50+5 generic IO) is 2 minutes and 10 seconds, versus around 59 seconds on Live. With that much recharge, the set's mez protection still isn't perma on the Test server. Activating Hasten doesn't impact the recharge of Kuji-In Rin on Test, which suggests global recharge is the component getting ignored. I hope this is a bug, because if it's intentional then it's an enormous unlisted nerf to the set. As it stands, the reduction to movement speed baffles me. I get why it was moved from the toggle, but not why it was gutted so heavily. It's a fun and thematic part of the set, and enables someone to make a Fast Character without going into Super Speed. If the concern was that Ninjitsu + Ninja Run/Beast Run/Athletic Run let characters achieve Super Speed and Super Jump speed levels, that's certainly no longer a factor! Since Travel powers now directly increase movement speed caps, there's now a distinct advantage to taking travel powers anyway. If Ninjitsu's speed values were left unchanged, it would still be eclipsed by actual Travel powers given the buffs they're getting (other than Infiltration, which seems like a poor reason to gut Ninjitsu all on its own). My question, then, is what problem is this trying to solve? Is the speed reduction intentional? If so, why? Going Fast certainly wasn't something that made Ninjitsu overpowered. It seems like nerfing a huge part of what makes Ninjitsu fun and unique as a set, to no tangible benefit that I can see. I am genuinely curious about the rationale behind it, since this is the second time a speed reduction like this has shown up for Ninjitsu in the patch notes.

Interesting! Did you notice if those criticals were actually a result of you entering Hide via the proc? Stalkers have a 10% baseline crit chance even when un-Hidden (which goes up by another 3% for every person on your team), so seeing another power crit after an Assassin's Strike in the combat log doesn't necessarily mean it was the result of the Hide proc firing. The chat log insisting that you're entering a Hidden state every time you hit with AS is especially interesting, though; I hadn't noticed that, before! This could point to the proc actually firing 90% of the time like it's supposed to, but there being some factor that suppresses the Hide from actually applying? My original theory for all of this was that it had something to do with the Hide power suppressing its Hidden status for eight seconds after hitting or being hit by something, but the lockout window seems to be longer than eight seconds and still seems to occur when Hide is detoggled.

Hello! I've encountered something odd with the Chance to Hide proc, and wanted to see whether other people are encountering the same behavior and if it's a known, intentional aspect of the enhancement. By my calculations, my current slotting puts its proc chance comfortably above 100% (so it gets clamped to the 90% proc chance cap), but it doesn't fire off anywhere close to 90% of the time. In testing done by both myself (Street Justice / Super Reflexes) and a friend (Staff Fighting / Super Reflexes), we found that after the proc triggered there was a roughly ten second window in which it refused to fire again regardless of its theoretical chance to proc. This behavior was not mirrored by other procs in the power; when slotted with both Mako's Bite Chance for Lethal proc (3.5 PPM) and the Superior Stalker's Guile proc (5 PPM), the Mako's Bite proc frequently fired back-to-back when spamming Assassin's Strike off cooldown — something that the Stalker's Guile proc never did, despite its notably-higher PPM. If we waited around ten seconds after the Hide proc fired to try hitting AS again, it went off around 90% of the time as expected. This seems to suggest the Chance to Hide proc has a specific internal cooldown period during which it can't fire again, which doesn't seem to be listed anywhere that I could find. It's entirely possible there's something else going on, but I'm not sure what it would be. I'm including the build used in testing as an attachment for reference, and the proc chance calculations I used in the spoiler below. Fistfight Revision2 - Stalker (Street Justice).mxd

Confirming this for Shriek on Sonic Attack. If I use Bright Shriek Alternate or Dark Shriek Alternate on my Defender, the animation is slow enough for the power to recharge completely and still have to wait a moment before it can fire again when put on auto. If I change it to Default, Bright Sonic Attack, or Dark Sonic attack, the animation is far shorter and is complete well before the power can recharge. This winds up being even more significant as far as movement is concerned - if Shriek is on auto with the alternate animation, the animation is so long that it is impossible to move at all between casts, while there's plenty of time for free movement between casts using the regular animation. I have gifs of the animations linked below. Regular Alternate Though not super obvious from the gifs, the regular animation is roughly half the length of the recharge while the alternate animation lasts for the full duration.

D'oh! That'd do it. I definitely had them downloaded originally, but must've inadvertantly deleted or replaced the folders when trying to update the MoreMaps bundle to see the new PvP zone badges. My bad! Thank you for the response!

I'm having the same issue. After downloading the More Maps bundle and unzipping it, those folders are missing entirely. I get data\texture_library, then the GUI, MAPS, and V_MAPS folders, but MAPS and V_MAPS both only contain the city and static folders. All other folder categories, like Safeguard and Outdoor_Missions, are completely missing every time I download and extract the files.

Most of the new Chest options simply aren't available when you're using Shirts: Metallic Dress Top, Carnival of Light, Labeaux 1 and 2, all the Yakuza options, and Spectrum are all unavailable. This is more notably a problem for the female frame since they have more Shirt options and more new Chest options, but the Spectrum Chest is also unavailable when using the one Shirt option males get. All the pieces missing for Shirts are also missing in the Unique Tops section with the togas as well with all the Robotic Arms, though the Robotic Arms might be a more difficult fix. As someone pointed out in an older thread, the Spectrum Chest in particular is also unavailable for Robes, Sleeveless Robes, Jackets, Sleeveless Jackets, and Trench Coat options on males - interestingly, it is available for Robes, Sleeveless Robes, and Trench Coats for females, but still missing from Jackets and Sleeveless Jackets. I won't assume that these are straightforward fixes, but it does seem more like random oversights than anything else in most of these cases. Is there any chance of this getting fixed in the future? Being able to use the Spectrum chest with more stuff would be excellent, as would being able to combine some of the other new chest options with shirts since they can already be used with jackets.

I've tried this out a little bit on the test server, and here are my thoughts so far! I like the idea of fastsnipe not being tied to ToHit, for the reasons some people mentioned earlier - it wasn't realistic for all ATs/Sets to achieve it without serious, serious investment. I seem to recall reading it was especially difficult for Dominators to achieve. Rolling fastsnipe into a baseline function seems fine to me. I don't think it will be overpowered, since many endgame builds can get fastsnipe already - it's a strong attack, yes, but as people have mentioned many blast sets have trouble with single target damage otherwise. Especially with the recharge for blasters/defenders/corruptors getting bumped up, I think snipes will maintain their place as strong attacks to weave in when they're off cooldown without being gamebreaking. A reasonable comparison might be the decision to make Assassin's Strike for Stalkers into a fast-cast out of Stealth - it turned a power that was essentially useless in combat into a quick, powerful, single-target strike that kept its hefty endurance cost. This is the first part I take issue with. One of my favorite parts about fastsnipe is the ability to quickly hit far-off enemies (especially runners). Realistically I don't think the range matters that much for the actual power level, but it just felt good and made the snipes stay mechanically distinct. With this, I'm concerned that in-combat they'll just be Normal But Strong Single Target Attacks and lose some of their mechanical identity. Basically they won't feel like a snipe when they just have the same range as everything else in your arsenal. I'm fine with it having a reduced range compared to Slow Snipes, but think that Fast Snipes having a longer range than other blast powers would still be nice (90-100 feet, maybe?). Regarding balance concerns about sets without snipes, or sets like Devices where guaranteeing Fastsnipe was one of the few things it has going for it, I imagine those will eventually be addressed through further balance patches. The sets without snipes already had that problem in late-game builds, and Devices needs some attention anyway. This change might make some of the imbalances more front-and-center, but it's not going to create any that weren't there to begin with. Targeting Drone making fast-snipe easier to achieve did not make Devices a high-performing set to begin with, since Blasters could already get fastsnipe with well-slotted Tactics and a Kismet IO. Now, this part's really minor, but I have to ask about it. I love LRM Rocket from Munitions Mastery for Blasters. It was a fun toy I liked using on Live, despite it objectively not being that great. Four minute recharge, four second interruptable cast time, need to spec deep into the entirely lackluster Munitions Mastery epic pool to get it at all - from a build perspective, it can be tough to justify outside of getting it for concept or as a gimmick! I was disappointed to find on the test server before sunset that it didn't follow the same fastsnipe rules as other sniper attacks, was disappointed again to find out it still wasn't the case when the game suddenly came back to life with improvements, and was triply disappointed to discover it doesn't work with these new changes either. Is there any chance at all of it getting updated somewhere down the line to follow a similar principle as other snipe attacks, with a (possibly tuned-down) faster in-combat version? I understand if that would be too powerful, but it be nice to hear Developer thoughts on it one way or another.

The length of this post kinda got away from me, but hopefully some of it's helpful! As everyone else said, if you want to increase team DPS then support is really the way to go. Kinetics is the absolute king of damage buffing in regular conent, but relies on big mobs to Fulcrum Shift off of and falls off a bit when squaring up against big single targets like isolated AVs or GMs. Debuff-heavy sets like Rad fare much better against AVs, and some buffs like Nature’s Overgrowth can provide hefty damage buffs without requiring big groups of enemies to maintain. As for personal raw DPS, here’s what I know either from personal experience or hearing from others. • Titan Weapons is an absolute monster when IOed out. TW Brute or Scrapper with /Bio Armor or /Fire Armor is gonna put out some ridiculous numbers, both Single Target and AoE. Of the two, Bio is more adaptive and survivable, but doesn’t have the raw damage of Burn. Brutes are gonna get more mileage out of /FA than Scrappers just because they have the aggro control to keep mobs from running out of Burn. • Ice/Fire on Blasters is absolutely ludicrous with the amount of damage (both ST and AoE) that it can put out. It’s obviously less survivable, but can still be built pretty sturdy. If you want pure damage potential and like to live a little more dangerously, this is probably very top of the list (or at least pretty close to it). It can leverage Burn surprisingly well given the slows it has available in Ice, though not as well as a Brute. • I also remember hearing that Defenders could rival Blaster DPS if they have Kinetics or run Soul Drain (I think available in Ghost Widow’s patron pool). I haven’t tried running Soul Drain on a Defender yet, but I imagine that it combined with a primary that has resistance debuffs and damaging blast set (probably Ice or Fire) could output some serious personal DPS while also bringing nice stuff for a team. •Heard good things about certain Controller combos (Ill/Rad, Fire/Kin, etc), but don't know enough about them to say much. My understanding is that they bring good personal DPS and control (dispersing aggro for Illusion and more traditional control for Fire) at the expense of weaker buffs/debuffs than Defenders. • If we’re talking pure single target DPS, both Kinetic Melee and Street Justice for Stalkers can put out some bonkers numbers, probably doubly so if paired with /Bio. These sets aren’t that great on other ATs, but they play exceptionally well on Stalkers. I’m gonna talk a lil more about why that is, because they’re fun and I love Stalkers. ○ Normally Kin Melee gets Power Siphon instead of Build Up, which lets your attacks stack up some +Damage and +ToHit on each hit rather than getting it all at once. Critting with its Tier 9 Power, Concentrated Strike, also instantly recharges Power Siphon (making it pretty lackluster on ATs that can’t crit, like Brutes and Tanks). However, Stalkers get regular old Build Up, can crit on-demand to instantly recharge Build Up (especially with the Chance to Hide ATO proc), AND have an additional chance to recharge Build Up via their other ATO proc. What this means is that Kin Melee stalkers can have an absurd uptime on Build Up, instantly recharging it very regularly and skyrocketing their DPS. It has a very high potential and average DPS, but is a little inconsistent since it has some reliance on RNG. Also worth noting, the cast time for non-stealthed Assassin’s Strike is extremely fast, bordering on instant – most AS are pretty fast out of stealth, but KM’s seems exceptionally so. ○ Street Justice’s combo system works really, really well alongside building up Assassin’s Focus stacks, and Assassin’s Strike builds two combo levels all by itself. Again the Chance to Hide proc is the real star of the show here, since once you build up adequate Assassin’s Focus stacks you can go Shin Breaker -> Assassin’s Strike to immediately be at Combo Level 3, and if your chance to Hide proc goes off you’re guaranteed a Critical level 3 Crushing Uppercut. The extra damage from the combo level doesn’t get doubled by the crit, but it’s still enough damage to almost be on-par with a second Assassin’s Strike. With enough recharge you can get an attack chain along the lines of: (after building enough Focus stacks) Crit Assassin’s Strike -> Combo 3 Crushing Uppercut (Crit if Hide proc went off) -> Sweeping Cross -> Shin Breaker -> Crit Assassin’s Strike -> Combo 3 Crushing Uppercut (possible Crit), etc etc., throwing in the occasional Heavy Blow when you need to build another Assassin’s Focus stack. Both Sweeping Cross and Shin Breaker take -Res procs as well (Achilles’ Heel in Shin Breaker, Fury of the Gladiator in Sweeping Cross), which is icing on the cake and means pretty much every part of your chain either has massive damage with a high crit chance or has a chance to lower your target's resistance. I’ve heard that Water Spout from Mako’s pool can make a nice addition as well, since it can also take -Res procs. Stalkers feel especially good deleting the hardier targets in mobs while more AoE-focused team members clear out everything else. They don’t bring the team DPS of support ATs, but are exceptionally good at leveraging other people’s buffs/debuffs to put the hurt on big tough targets like Bosses, EBs, AVs, and GMs. Long story short: Defenders/Controllers/Corruptors bring more team synergy, TW/Bio or TW/FA Brutes/Scrappers deal high AoE and ST damage with decent personal survivability, Ice/Fire Blasters deal obscene AoE damage with lower survivability, and Stalkers don’t have much AoE but their ATO procs can turn them into single-target monsters. It really depends on what content you plan to run, how much you plan on teaming, and what playstyles appeal to you.

Character: Toolbox Account: Goat? Battlecry: Time for a tuneup.