Maelwys

Personally I'd prefer a slightly lessened crash on some of the tougher-to-recover-from T9s (Unstoppable, Overload, Elude, Kuji-In Retsu). Honestly, I'm comparatively fine with losing *most* of my HP and Endurance. But that -100% Endurance is a killer. I'd much rather have a "-90%" or "-100" Endurance loss than a "-100%" endurance loss. Detoggling sucks.

It's the +ToHit as much as the +Damage. If you're getting +40% (2x Base for Tankers) ToHit "for free" you don't need to bother with any Accuracy aspect in your attacks; and procs that need a hit check also benefit. IMO the major difference between Rage setups and Unleashed Might setups is going to be that the former will be better if you're using multiple procbombed off-set attacks like Cross Punch, Gloom and Dark Obliteration... and the latter will be better if you're sticking within the powerset (because of its interactions with Hand Clap) and/or if you're at the damage cap (so partying with a Kinetics, or Active AE Farming). Rage's "Crash" is supposed to be the limiting factor; but damage procs bypass that. Brute Fury also muddies the break-even line a lot; so even with off-powerset attacks and no Fulcrum Shift they probably won't be hugely dissimilar. But I'm sure someone'll test it!

FWIW, it's been confirmed by a Dev (although I shan't name them just in case Moogly Googlies me! 😛) that the Offensive Mode debuffs, DNA Siphon recharge and Evolving Armor +regen are all bugged currently on Open Beta. So expect a fix for those in due course. ((It won't take the sting out of the Parasitic Aura changes, but there should at least be a little positive clawback to baseline survivability whenever those fixes land!))

♫♫ "I could have been someone", well, so could anyone ♫♫ ♫♫ You took my procs from me when I first saw panel #2 ♫♫ ♫♫ I kept them with me, babe, I put them with my own ♫♫ ♫♫ Can't clear four stars alone, I've built my toon around you... ♫♫

(i) At present for a like-for-like attack it's adding lower average damage until your damage is being buffed by +233.33 damage or more. Live: Any 100 damage attack gets 40%*100=40 additional damage all the time. Test: An ED-capped 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*1.955)=78.2 additional damage 30% of the time. Which is an average of 0.3*78.2=23.46 additional damage. Test: A damage-capped 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*5)=200 additional damage 30% of the time. Which is an average of 0.3*200=60 additional damage. Test: With a +233.33% damage boost a 100 damage attack gets 0.4(100*3.33333) = 133.333 damage 30% of the time. For an average of 0.3*133.333= 40.00 additional damage. (ii) At present it's not applying against Nukes; so you have to use it on something else, such as an AoE instead. Live: Unbuffed Sentinel "Overcharge" with Shinobi-Iri = 306.60 Test: Unbuffed Sentinel "Overcharge" with Shinobi-Iri = 218.96 (a loss of -87.64 damage) Enhanced 'Refractor Beam' = (50.0555*1.95) = 97.61 damage Test: Enhanced 'Refractor Beam' with Shinobi-Iri = 1.4(50.0555*1.95) = 136.65 damage (+39.04). @30% chance that's an average gain of +11.712 damage Damage-Capped 'Refractor Beam' = (50.0555*5) = 250.28 damage Test: Damage-Capped 'Refractor Beam' with Shinobi-Iri = 1.4(50.0555*5) = 350.39 damage (+100.1) @30% chance that's an average gain of +30.03 damage So if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost one single big non-Nuke attack? It's worse. And if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost a Nuke? It's way worse. And if you currently use Shinobi-Iri to boost a Nuke and are prepared to adapt your playstyle to cope with the change by swapping to an AoE? It's still worse. Sure... sometimes it isn't worse on the occasions that you get lucky and actually happen to crit. But spending ~8s re-entering Stealth to now only have a 70% chance of bugger all gain? Yeah, worse. We can debate the exactitudes of the semantics all day; but realistically I'm not seeing a bright side unless you're Fulcrum Shifted and intentionally using non-Nuke attacks.

"Like Blaster Shinobi" is similar to the way it works on Live - granting a +40% damage buff (Sentinels) and a +25% damage buff (Blasters) on your first attack out of stealth. However the Blaster version also gains a separate Lethal proc (with a flat 20% activation chance, not PPM) on all their attacks (not just from stealth) The Sentinel version on Test now seems to be modelled after the Scrapper version, which grants their AoE attacks +30% chance to Crit and ST attacks +65% chance to Crit. Unfortunately since Sentinels only deal 40% damage with their Crits compared to Scrappers 100%; this is a very bad deal for Sentinels even on their AoEs. In practice on my BR/Nin Sentinel it's about ~90 less damage on their Nukes in return for a 30% chance to deal ~48 more damage on a non-Nuke AoE (averages to ~14.5).

I've gone on record as saying I'm distinctly not a fan of the T9 changes as-is. There are aspects of the changes I can get on board with. Losing the crashes? Great. Standardizing them around similar levels of duration/recharge? Takes away a bit of the uniqueness, but since they don't all have completely identical effects... Sure. Lowering the durations from 120s and 180s to 30s and 40s? HELL no. They have tweaked the durations a little bit (Unstoppable went from 30s to 40s for example) but it's been far too slight thus far. IMO the duration should be at minimum 60 seconds for the powers that previously had 120s duration (like One with the Shield and Strength of Will) and 90 seconds for the powers that previously had 180s duration (like Overload, Unstoppable, Kuji-In Retsu and Elude). Because anything less than that completely upends the original point of these powers - they become comparatively useless for surviving an occasional prolonged difficult encounter (think: fighting a BBEG) in favour of becoming a more generic short-term "spike survivability" boost (think: weathering a nasty alpha strike). It's the devs' sandbox we're playing inside of; and they can certainly choose to upend things like this. However it's still a bad idea (in my mind at least!) to upend things this much whenever they could tone the changes down and/or implement mutually exclusive T9 powers - and that approach would seem to be the best one, frankly. Consider: + Two versions of each T9 per armor powerset. + One with short duration/recharge [say 30s/120s; if non-enhancable] + One with long duration/recharge [say 120s/360s; if non-enhanceable] + Neither with an utterly crippling "-100% endurance and most of your health" crash + Win/Win. Please?

Clarified this in the Ninjitsu Feedback thread; but yes, it stacks additively. So you can have anything from 5% (no opportunity) to 40% (full opportunity) plus the 30% from stealth. However Shinobi-Iri requires an eight second break in combat to re-enter stealth, and its +30% Crit Chance boost wears off as soon as you re-enter combat. So just like on Live, it's good for exactly one attack (and that's assuming you're taking 8+ seconds between one mob and the next one!). And the really sucky bit is that Sentinel Shinobi-Iri's buff has become far more unreliable (it's now a 30% chance of increasing your damage rather than guaranteed) and its buff no longer applies to Nukes (which was the typical use case for it on Sentinels). So it's objectively worse now by every metric.

I've posted this on the Discord already, but copying here for completeness/visibility: (i) The Offensive Stance Debuffs are definitely borked. My Tanker on Open Beta is currently being subjected to -13.33% Resistance and -6.66% Defense rather than -7.5 Res and -3.75% Def. Last I checked it was working fine on Scrappers but much too high on all four of the other ATs (Tankers/Brutes/Stalkers/Sentinels). Although the -resistance is (correctly) "unresistable" now, at least. (ii) The hit to Parasitic Aura's regeneration/recovery buff uptime (45s/270s --> 30s/300s) is hurting it a bit too... but I can kinda-sorta understand that since it's in line with the other T9 armor set changes. (iii) However by far the biggest pain at present is DNA Siphon. On Live, the recharge is 90s and the regeneration buff lasts for 30s. On Test, it's supposed to have adaptive recharge up to a maximum of 90s. Which sounds fine in theory. However the current recharge mechanic on this appears to be BROKEN. It is adding too much recharge for each enemy hit, and it also does not appear to be correctly respecting recharge aspect slotting nor global recharge. As an example versus One Single Hostile Target: With 89.9% local and +125% global recharge; it should be 11.91s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/3.149). But it's actually 36s. With 89.9% local and +55% global recharge; it should be 15.31s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/2.449). But it's actually 46s. With 0% local and +125% global recharge; it should be 16.67s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/2.25). But it's actually 50s. With 0% local and +55% global recharge; it should be 24.19s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/1.55). But it's actually 1m14s. (Testing performed on my Bio/Staff Tanker on OB) The recharge appears to be the same regardless of the number of mobs hit with it. And it's also simply too darn long. In practice; on Live after defeating a big batch of foes, my Tanker can trigger DNA Siphon every ~30s (90s recharge time reduced to 28.58s with slotting/global recharge) and gain a 30s duration regeneration buff. Which ends up being effectively permanent, so helps to keep their HP bar topped up. On Test I would expect to be able to do the same thing (since it's supposed to cap out at 90s recharge time) but it's at most jumping down to ~36s after power activation instead of ~28s. I can understand there being a tiny bit of discrepancy here due to the way adaptive recharge takes a moment to actually kick in... but 8 additional seconds for DNA Siphon to become available again is owch-inducing. I'm having to try to rely on Ageless and multiple Force Feedback procs (yuck) to bring it back down under the 30s mark. In addition; the regeneration buff granted by DNA Siphon appears to be missing the "does not scale with enemy level" flag. vs a Level 50 mob in PI (-1 to me) it's giving my Tanker +5.55HP/Sec. vs a Level 1 mob in Atlas Park (-51 to me) it's giving +30.00HP/Sec. (iv) Also worth noting that Evolving Armor is (apparently incorrectly) granting +regeneration whenever I'm in Offensive Stance; not just Efficient Stance. Which is very slightly offsetting the other negatives but still appears to be unintentional so I'm mentioning it here for completeness sake! 🙂 (v) Finally - Ablative Armor. It seems to be working as intended... unless you try and activate it again before the first instance has worn off. Which is the same headache it's had on Live for years and appears to be a long-standing bug with +Absorb stacking in general (Rad Armor's "Particle Shielding" suffers from the same issue). The first +Absorb instance will give full effect... but the second buff instance applies before removing the first and will encounter the Absorb limit (100% of your base HP) and so grant a reduced Absorb figure. Then the original buff instance finally vanishes, leaving you with less absorb than you had previously. In practice, this rarely matters in combat as your absorb buffer is long since depleted before you trigger the power a second time. But I've encountered multiple cases where a Bio armor toon has it set to autofire and ends up with artificially-reduced Absorb before leaping into a big GM/AV fight. ((Again, this one is at least a long standing bug. See here and here)) Illustration: (Live) First Instance: Second Instance: (Test) First Instance: Second Instance: Tanker Base HP at level 50 = 1874.07 1727.36+146.71=1874.07 1067.63+806.44=1874.07 Whilst the version on Test is not providing as big a chunk of +Absorb (since it's working off your BaseHP now rather than your "boosted" MaxHP) it's still more than capable of running up against the Absorb limit with that 2nd application.

My testing showed that Shinobi-Iri requires the usual eight second break in combat to re-enter stealth, and it's being stealthed that grants a single +30% Crit chance boost that wears off as soon as you re-enter combat. It does appear to be additive with the inherent Crit boost from opportunity, so you can have anything from 5% (no opportunity) to 40% (full opportunity) plus the 30% from stealth. The sucky bit is that Sentinel Shinobi-Iri's buff has become far more unreliable (30% chance of increasing your damage rather than 100%) and its buff no longer applies to Nukes (which was the typical use case for it). So it's objectively worse now by every metric. Scrapper Shinobi-Iri isn't quite as bad since their Crits inflict +100% attack damage instead of Sentinel's +40% attack damage. And they don't get Nukes.

AFAIK the Devs are intentionally leaving Kheldians well enough alone until they have sufficient time to devote to a complete rework.

Is that a typo for Bots perchance? Getting ~30s faster seems a bit iffy!

They'd need to pick something to make it mutually exclusive with, and Jacob's Ladder is too low tier and Chain Induction has a much faster cycle rate. So I suspect it'd be Thunder Strike. Which I'm not against per say... just pointing out that something has to give on Stalkers to fit in Assassin's Strike.

Hopefully just slipped through the cracks. Might even be fixed internally on a different branch. There were a LOT of power changes in this one after all!! 🙂

This was using the wrong values on CB and it looks like it's still busted on Open Beta. Tanker: (that's -13.33% Res, -6.66% Def rather than the predicted -7.5% Res, -3.75% Def) Scrapper: (that's -5.62% Res, -2.81% Def which matches the predicted -5.63% Res, -2.81% Def) Stalker/Brute: (that's -10% Res, -5% Def which is considerably higher than the predicted values for a Tanker, let alone a Scrapper) Sentinel: (that's -9.33 Res, -4.67% Def which is considerably higher than the predicted values for a Tanker, let alone a Scrapper) Currently the only correct "Offensive Adaptation" debuffs are the Scrapper's. The values of the rest are far too high/harsh.

I mean, it's getting +1.5 KB Protection now instead of +1.4 from 3x Gladiator's Armor. And that's considerably better than before when fighting +2s and higher because reasons. But you still need a Set Bonus (like 3x Gladiator's Armor) rather than a Global Bonus (like Karma/Steadfast/Zephyr) which grants KB protection for them to inherit it.

FWIW, these are the same changes to Radiation Therapy that they couldn't quite squeeze in last time. And to that I still says "Yay". Meltdown I'm a bit more meh about since my Scrapper never cared about the crash and it's gone from 60s up/80s down (43% uptime) to 30s up/60s down (33% uptime) Agreed.

If you STAY them and then move you can repeatedly FOLLOW/STAY them whilst keeping them within teleport leash distance (500ft?) which works fine on indoor maps. The new mechanics also allow you to BAMF them to you on demand (just be sure they're in FOLLOW mode rather than STAY) when you find a handy corner/elevator to stop.

Ah. I suspect there's a joke in there somewhere about /Marine and being salty... 🥁 Yeah, I get it sucks when stuff gets nerfed. But /Marine is just one single powerset. And it's not unique to Masterminds. Whitecap's procbombing potential and Tide damage procs were what got the hammer, since they were apparently causing issues on other ATs too. It was also, to be fair, the runaway standout overperforming Mastermind secondary. Even after these nerfs overall I'd still rate it on par with /Time. True. But that's kinda the nature of trying to maintain game balance though. And I maintain that this patch has seen a lot of improvements for Masterminds. Just maybe not /Marine Masterminds. (Who I still say had it coming, Humbug! Humbug I say!!) 😛 😉

Like, for example... + Supremacy gaining +10% Resistance, +100% Regeneration and +10% AoE Defence to henchmen? + Henchmen gaining an additional +10% of your Set Bonuses? + Henchmen gaining a +75%/+100%/125% Defence buff (depending on the tier) for several seconds after summoning? + Beasts self-heal gaining 67% strength and many of their attacks having reduced cast time for improved DPA? 👀 Nope, no buffs there. Nosireebob. To me a "buff" is a beneficial change. That's anything that makes the target power or ability or character stronger or more effective. And all the stuff I mentioned earlier - QoL or otherwise - definitely makes my MMs more effective. With the noteworthy exception of my /marine MMs. And to be perfectly honest, they had it coming 🤷‍♂️ Also as I mentioned earlier - what we're seeing in this patch is the huge set of changes that were originally scheduled for being released at the same time as the MM even-level pets tweak. The devs intentionally split these into two patches in order to allow the playerbase better opportunity to stress test those even-level pet changes. As such what you're seeing here are only the second half of the CURRENT round of tweaks. Meaning there are more in the pipeline. Including some stuff that the Devs started considering in response to the original player feedback on the MM even-level pet changes in both Closed and Open Beta. The powers team can only realistically squeeze out so much before the Holiday break. 🦃 🎄

If you don't see all that QOL stuff as being sufficiently beneficial to constitute a "buff"; fair enough I guess. FWIW personally I tend to take at least one personal attack for the buff/debuff synergy; but I don't really care about their raw damage outside of a few procbombed grenades. Being able to stick a Acc/Dam plus an Aura ATO in them has freed up at least one enhancement slot from a henchmen summon on all of my Bots and Mercs and Ninjas 🥳 Beasts are definitely in a funny place. I believe @BRADICAL was parsing them about 12s/15s behind Ninjas/Thugs on a Pylon/Dummy before these changes... but they're apparently supposed to be more Tankier (I know!) than damage focused. I very much doubt the powers team are done with them just yet. Outside of Supremacy range, sure. And it's also become difficult to have them act as "point defense" turrets outside of Supremacy range because of the perception debuff. But personally I'll happily take those tradeoffs in return for MMs being able to actually stealth through a mission and pets taking less of a beating whilst "keeping up". Unfortunately the various Aggressive/Defensive/Passive pet stances really just tweak AI behaviour; so they don't (currently) allow different power effects to be triggered depending on what AI state the pets are in... such as only enabling Stealth when the pets are in Passive/Follow mode. Which to me would be the ideal. Henchmen also do each still have their own aggro caps + you can technically still attract the attention of an extra 17 mobs per pet providing they remain on the target's hate list (e.g. they're visible or have dealt damage etc). I've done the AE farming runs on CB to prove it.

Hey, they buffed Masterminds. We gots reduced Endurance Cost, more survivable pets (especially during resummoning) and the ability to have the pets keep up with you via a zero-recharge BAMF. The auras from our ATOs were mostly merged into Supremacy, and the ATOs themselves can now be slotted into our personal attacks (freeing up valuable slotting real estate). They even buffed Beast Summoning's damage output and survivability. And that's only the stuff they could squeeze into THIS patch. ...they just nerfed some *other* stuff. Mainly Whitecap, Rage, Hypnotizing Lights and the duration of the Armor T9s. And my Ninjitsu Sentinel's Shinobi-Iri. But Sentinels and Brutes and Stalkers all got sizable blanket buffs too. And did you see the buffs to Broadsword and Spines and Kinetic Melee and Psi Melee and Dual Pistols? And all the Toggle Radius increases? Heck; they even buffed BURN. 🤯

Rage is a straight +70% Damage buff on Tankers. With typical ED-capped damage aspect that's 100% (base) + 95.5% (Slotting) + 70% (Rage) = 265.5% total. Unleashed Might is only a +17.5% Damage buff on Tankers; but it also increases the base damage of most SuperStrength attacks. + Haymaker goes from 86.64 to 112.63 base damage (+30%) + KO Blow goes from 188.08 to 211.57 base damage (+12.5%) + Foot Stomp goes from 75.02 to 84.4 base damage (+12.5%) etc. etc. Even if we take the lowest common denominator there for illustration (Footstomp's +12.5%)... With typical ED-capped damage aspect that's 1.125x(100% (base) + 95.5% (slotting) + 17.5% (Unleashed Might)) = 239.625% total. So on a Tanker 1 stack of Rage versus Unleashed Might actually ends up looking like 265.5% versus 239.625% with no other +Damage or Incarnate buffs in play. That's a bit lower certainly; but it's balanced out by the fact that Unleashed Might has NO CRASH. And if we also factor in common Incarnate buffs then it can get very close indeed: 1x Rage: 100% (base) + 125.5% (Slotting + T4 Musculature) + 70% (Rage) + 10% (Assault Hybrid passive) + 90% (Assault Core Hybrid Active) = 395.5% total. UM: 1.125x(100% (base) + 125.5% (Slotting + T4 Musculature) + 17.5% (Unleashed Might) + 10% (Assault Hybrid passive) + 90% (Assault Core Hybrid Active)) = 385.875% total. That's a comparative loss in DPS of only -2.4% (on a solo Tanker regardless of their Defensive powerset, Inspiration usage and Lore Pet choices). So if you're used to double-stacking Rage? Sure; running Unleashed Might is absolutely a chonky DPS loss until you hit the damage cap. ...but it's still a fine replacement for single-stacked Rage; even on solo Tankers. And it performs better with team buffs. ...and its introduction makes Super Strength performance far easier for the devs to balance; potentially allowing it to be made available to other melee ATs like Scrappers. ...and it also causes Hand Clap to start actually dealing damage; opening up better attack chain possibilities than before. (57.58 base damage; with an Arcanatime of 1.452s.. which is better DPA than baseline Cross Punch and almost 3 times wider and it procs rather decently...) So yeah, colour me happy with the changes. Although I'd still prefer Unleashed Might to grant a scale 1.5 ToHit buff instead of scale 1.25. Meh.

Aside from the Stalker Hide interaction differences, AFAIK the main thing is a higher damage cap from proper modifier inheritance. Proc rate should be the same, so glad it's bearing out in testing...