MC333

Thank you for addressing Water Blast's below par ST damage. Testing on Brainstorm vs Live server, level 50 Corruptors, against level 50 target dummy. DEHYDRATE - activated on target recently hit by other water-based attacks Result: +17% damage, 169.24 vs. 144.58 (Brainstorm vs. Live) Conclusions: GOOD - Damage increase of 17% is modest but likely appropriate, given the secondary heal effect. BAD - Damage increase occurs in ticks 6 and 7 SECONDS AFTER ACTIVATION (6-7s is an eternity in CoX, and much will be lost to corpses). SUGGESTION: Please add the damage increase to upfront damage, or at worst add increase within the original 5 seconds of DoT ticks. ENHANCED WATER JET - including 2nd Jet bonus activation Result: +33% damage, 449.10 vs. 335.34 (Brainstorm vs. Live) Conclusions: GOOD - Damage increase of 33% is significant, but not enough to be imbalancing given the 3 Tidal mechanic required. BAD - Total Damage is 53% DoT on Brainstorm & DoT finishes 3 seconds AFTER the 2nd Water Jet. (vs. both Jets are all-upfront damage / 0% DoT on Live) SUGGESTION: Instead of 4 ticks Cold over 6 seconds, change the damage increase to upfront damage to match the behavior on Live. (Or at worst change it to 4 ticks over 3 seconds or less, so the 1st Jet's DoT finishes before or at the 2nd Jet hit.) "ST leaves a lot to be desired for" Changing the damage increases from DoT to direct damage will better address the Water Blast ST issue by denting HP bars faster.

Thank you very much for all the work done to bring us a new power set. Tested: Controller and Dominator, solo play, majority at level 50, across a wide variety of zones/maps and against a wide variety of enemies. While I really like the set overall, I have found 2 powers to be underwhelming. Sparkling Chain - frustratingly ineffective due to short 15' radius of chain hops. Majority of enemy spawn groups in the game include enemies spaced more than 15' apart. Sparkling Chain is usually only able to hit a fraction (often a small fraction) of an enemy group, while other AOE Immobilizes are able to routinely hit a lot more enemies. How to improve? - Increase the chain jump radius to 20' or 25' to improve the potential coverage area. (At 20' or 25' radius the coverage would still be significantly less than all the targeted AOE immobilizes which have 30' radius.) Incindiary Aura - overall feels lackluster, Blast Off occurs infrequently. Pyro is hard on endurance and Incindiary Aura could use a little more incentive to justify the added end cost of the toggle. How to improve? - Maybe increase Blast Off chance and allow multiple Blast Off to occur simultaneously to add mitigation and theme flavor. - Or maybe add some -RES to the Aura itself ("combustible properties")

Good idea to simply change the name to Insulated and remove the grounded requirement for KB protection. The current Grounded KB protection fails too often while on the ground, apparently due to glitches with terrain/maps. My previous post neglected to address the flakiness, focusing only on the patch note which does not appear to be working. Grounded is not providing 5 seconds of KB protection on Brainstorm, instead resulting in 0 KB protection a fraction of a second after leaving the ground. Same behavior as on live server.

I really like the Adaptive AoE Holds change and the flexibility they add to the game. I tested 3 of the holds by copying characters to Brainstorm and found the holds to be working as intended. Suggestion: Please reduce the animation time of Flash to 2 seconds. The 3 second rooting animation time has no place in CoX in 2025, given it is a short duration hold power with no secondary effects and PBAOE range. Animation times are 2 seconds or less for all but one of the other Adaptive AoE Holds. The 3 second animation has been a popular complaint for many years, and is requested multiple times in this thread. If left unchanged at 3 seconds, Flash will almost certainly continue to be one of the most frequently skipped powers.

Can you shed some light on the goals regarding the changes to: AI modes Pet_Base and Pet_Ranged Bite (I am assuming "Smash" above is a typo for "Bite") For example: Should Fly Trap charge into melee range less often? At all? Should Fly Trap be using Bite frequently when it is already within melee range? Fly Trap testing observations - Open Beta 5 (Level 50 Controller and Dominator, solo testing) Fly Trap behavior seems somewhat inconsistent, in limited testing time. At Range, Fly Trap on average appears to be using more ranged attacks according to observation and combat logs. However, Fly Trap still frequently charges into melee range to use Bite. In Melee range, Fly Trap does use Bite at times (when already in melee range). However, Fly Trap often does not use Bite at all when in melee range (instead logs show it using 3-5 ranged attacks from melee range to finish off enemy). Total number of Bite attacks as % of overall attacks appears to be noticably lower than on Live server in combat logs for a handful of fights on each server. (Caveat: limited sample, various different enemy groups) The damage resistance improvements seem generally appropriate for a mostly ranged pet (or a bit on the low side if the pet will continue to charge into melee range). Controller pet controls are a very nice addition - controlling Fly Trap worked well in limited testing. If possible I'd like to see Fly Trap using Bite (consistently) only when it finds itself in melee range (versus charging in to use Bite). Eliminating the charging into melee, along with the moderate increase in damage resistances, would likely result in a more survivable and competitive Fly Trap compared to other pets.

Grounded - knockback protection in combat attributes is not lasting for 5 seconds after touching ground. Copied existing Tanker and Brute to Brainstorm server. Combat attributes show "0" knockback protection less than a second after leaving the ground by jump, Combat Jump, Super Jump, or Flight Pack. Behavior appears to be identical on Live and Brainstorm servers. (I'm assuming the fraction of a second delay before seeing "0" is due to a polling interval in combat attributes.) This is an important quality of life improvement and I consider 5 seconds to be the minimum duration necessary for this change to be effective. I suggest 10 seconds. Alternatively, I would actually prefer knockback protection was added to one of the armor powers, as I consider the lack of knocback protection in an armor set to be an outdated concept in 2025 gameplay.