Coyotedancer

Unfortunately, I don't have FRAPs installed on this PC, so I can't catch video of White Thorn's "live vs beta" runs with that DA mission I mentioned up-thread. (And, frankly, the files would be too large to reasonably upload even if I did-) How useful would posted logs be?

It's just like the New Council vs Masterminds issue... No one considered how a muti-goon-per-spawn, big damage, always auto-hit rez power that happened so frequently in play would have an outsized impact on a pet-dependent AT. Masterminds just aren't common enough to be "on the radar", I suspect. With the Stalker proc issue... my guess is that what we're seeing is a result of the combination of Stalkers' relative rarity compared to other melees, combined with most of the people playing Stalkers in Closed having followed the "usual practice" of running soft-capped Defense builds... They just would have been a lot less likely to notice that anything had really changed at all. Again, like Masterminds with the Council revamps, the eventual consensus may be that non-Defense Stalkers are an "acceptable casualty"... It's not like they're played by that many people, so the impact on "The Players At Large" won't be huge.

The actual Hide power and damage is an odd thing... Once upon a time, way back when, when Stalkers were new, there was a time when taking ANY damage at all would break the effect... Even something like jumping off of a balcony, using your own CJ or *running down a steep hill* would kick you out of Hide. The OG devs realized pretty quickly that that was silly and changed it. Minor damage like that no longer breaks a Stalker's Hide these days. That said, if you're doing something like standing in a fire patch or next to the Spine Bursting Longbow Warden it absolutely WILL break it if the "attack" makes it past your innately pretty ludicrous AOE Defense. What's happening here is a little different. The Proc effect Hide as it stands now outside of beta doesn't cancel if damage lands before the follow-up attack happens, allowing you to get a second Crit attack. It otherwise functions like ordinary Hide... You can absolutely do things like one-shotting a member of a group with your AS, have the proc fire, and then wander over... completely unseen... to stab that goon's unobservant buddy in the spleen exactly as if you'd done it without the proc and waited for regular Hide to return naturally. (You can't pull that off if his buddy is paying attention and sees you, of course... But you couldn't with regular Hide, either.) I have no clue how that's coded on the back end, but that's the behavior. For the rest of you testing it... Look at your Defense numbers. If you're soft-capped, you're less likely to get hit so you're less likely to notice any change. You need to try this with NON soft-capped characters (Or better yet, a full-on Resist or regeneration build-) to see the difference. I know, I know. No one should be building melees that aren't soft-capped. The Meta has spoken.... But some of us are rebels. We don't get with the program and in this case it's biting us.

I like the *idea* of a small bonus for having an interesting team composition... I'm just not sold on the specific team composition this is supposedly pushing. City just isn't a game that's built that way and that's one of its real strengths. It's one of the things that makes it very different from "Joe Average: the MMO". I think we need to lean into its diversity and adaptability rather than trying to teach newbies that it's something it isn't and never has been. By all means encourage interesting teaming arrangements. But don't try to stuff this nifty square peg of a game into the standard round hole.

Weird thing... but we actually DO have tumbleweeds in game. Go to the barren, rocky part of First Ward. Once in awhile one will bounce around down in the valley parts below the cliffs. No joke. I found them when I was doing my huge "Document ALL THE THINGS!" photo-project right before the shut down. I think I may even have a FRAPS video clip of them somewhere....

Yeah, the multiple, explosive magi can definitely be problematic, too... At least those guys aren't auto-hit, though, and they can be interrupted. Their animation time also seems to be a fair bit more forgiving. We get a few more seconds to react. I've had more success with my monstrosities surviving the new Circle than I have with the new Council missions, but neither is what I'd call kind to pet-dependent characters. Between the design choices here making life difficult for my Masterminds, the Bonfire nerf (Which *also* hits my Mastermind. Yay. <_< ), and the re-Hide proc change potentially forcing all of my Stalkers into soft-capped Defense builds rather I want to go that way or not, I'm starting to be a little 😞 about this update.

Doing... less... damage.... Oh yeah. Your character will definitely be less effective on a lower population shard. Stats are directly affected by the number of players online. Total truth. (Not really. Your character is unchanged when you transfer it. 😄)

My own Zen Mode content is throwing a fire-farming claws brute into a round on Cult's Demon City map, so I don't really have a dog in the "Council as bash-fodder" race, but having done some more running around with my Mastermind on a couple of different difficult settings now, I'm pretty much convinced that the auto-hit really is rougher on pets than it needs to be... It's not a disaster with smaller spawns where you have less rezzing going on, or if your pets can be controlled well enough to get them out of the way, but those are situations you can't really count on... Controllers can't order their pets to retreat. My demons' animation times and response times saw them caught flat-footed fairly regularly, even with my dedicated keybinds to move them around. That can be trouble with how hard that attack hits, especially given that even at lower difficulties, multiples are possible and they're each autohit. The consensus may be that the outsized impact that has on Masterminds doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things... They're not the most popular or most common AT out there, so the impact on the general player population may be seen as an acceptable trade off for having the Council as the City's new Danger Dudes.... But that does need to be an intentional trade-off made with full awareness.

I play solo/duo mostly... When I do team, it's with the family SG only... So, just having more people around really hasn't made any difference for me.

You do sort of need the larger community to see how the social aspects of it may work out in the larger community, yeah... 😐

If your intention is to make the proc much less useful than it currently is outside of beta... then yes. It's "working as intended". If that was NOT the intention of the change, then the "cancel on Damage" tag needs to be removed from the proc's re-Hide. ETA: For some specific data... Running the same mission (Stop the Tsoo Mercy Killings) at the same difficulty (+4x1) from Sha in DA on White Thorn (Non-soft-capped KM/Bio Stalker with the proc in her AS attack-), she gets the proc's re-Hide effect roughly half the time, rather using the slow or fast version of the power. On live, she gets a crit with the follow-up for each of those. Right now on beta she gets that crit on an average of one follow-up attack in three when the re-Hide happens, because in-coming damage breaks the effect before the attack. Obviously, a stalker with a soft-capped Defense build will see less of a difference, but do you REALLY want to encourage even more people to go "Defense or Bust!!!!" than already do? This is definitely going to be a bigger hit for Res-based builds or those of us who go for regen monsters instead of All Defense All The Time.

That's a fair trade, I'd say.

I'll second that request for Wings with the outfit. (And I'll give another minor poke about *returning* our ability to use wings with the Bolero coat and the tux tails coat. Which we could back in the Live days... The Bolero only for a short time, granted, but still. We were able to use the tails tux and wings together for YEARS before the old devs stealth-killed that combination late in the game's life.)

I like this idea... Have the current arrangement as one of several "extra Aether" possibilities. A whole team of the same AT. A team with each of the original Hero ATs. A team with each of the original villain ATs. A team that's all Support. A team that's all Melee or all Ranged... That fulfills getting a few more PAPs in player hands and I think more accurately shows off what City is actually about. We're just not playing a strongly set-role or specific role-focused game when it comes to the majority of content. Trying to tell newbies that we are limited that way feels like teaching them the wrong lesson.

It ends with the Ruin Mage as the only survivor of his group, being chased around by a cursing, grey-winged girl with glowing blue Tal swords. 😝 I missed one in a large group when I took Kestrel and Cardinal Circle hunting. Kes ended up chasing that jerk all over the room, trying to get a blade on him.

I just like the variety... Seeing all of the different types of mages out there in high level groups is just a lot more interesting than what we've currently got outside of beta. Figuring out how to handle them and in what order is more fun than just geeking the Death Mage and then burning down anybody with him without a second thought. Is the doubled-up Earthquake and Tar Patch issue a potential problem? Yeah. I think it is. That's well into "a bit much" territory. Are multiple exploding magi potentially an outsized issue for Masterminds and Controllers due to the way they tend to kneecap pets? Possibly. We need to get a good idea of just how badly that pet/goon interaction is typically likely to go, I think. But over all? It's a good change. An update to more than their wardrobe is something our musty old magi have needed for ages... And I'm saying that even as someone who's really fond of them.

For what it's worth, with my MM I *did* see a few of the Council guys bounce in each spawn group I dropped Bonfire on (I was running at x6, so got a fair few potential targets per group-), but it was never more than two or three, and I never noticed anyone bounce twice. I'd toss the power out there, a couple would go flopping, and then the patch might as well not have been active as far as KD was concerned... So, it may be both that the chance of KD for any particular thing per tick is low *and* the tick is now so slow that everything is just more likely to die before it has another chance of getting hit and landing on its butt? Either way, it was basically useless as a way to help mitigate runaways... Which was the entire reason I had it on a Mastermind to begin with.

I duo/trio just often enough to need a Taunt... because there's always that *ONE GUY* in every group who's just convinced that your 'Troller or your Blaster must die. Even when he's got a Brute in his face. Or a Tank stabbing him in the spleen...

And here I was giving the side-eye to the Moon Pies....

Absolutely! Anything else would just be... wrong.

If I have time this afternoon, I may have Amtes take one for the team, so to speak. I'll take her in at +4 just to see how quickly those higher level spawns shred her pack of howling monstrosities. Just guessing from what I've seen so far? The mobs will eat them alive. The Prince *might* hold out a little better than the others if I focus absolutely everything on keeping him alive, but I suspect he'll get worn down faster than I can counter sooner rather than later. And without the rest of the pack running along in bodyguard mode, there's only so much that my MM herself can survive. 'Should be interesting... (My only other MM is a Necro/Thermal, but I haven't shifted her over to the test server yet. I'm curious how more fragile minions than demons handle the new Council and Circle mobs, though. Anyone got a Ninja/ or Necro/ they're willing to throw out of the frying pan and into the fire to find out?)

I'm not attesting to anything the speedsters may think. I'm a devoted solo/duo player... I don't really care what they do or why. 😜

Yep... We'll have more runaways if that Council mission was anything to judge by, but it's not going to break much at the end of the day. I'll miss the entertainment factor of it, though.

Welcome to the way the modern City is... Speed is king. Rush to the end as efficiently as you can. Get your reward. Move on. I'm not sure exactly when that became 'The Way We Play Now' for everything, but speeding has been A Thing with TFs and such since the Live days.

I've never tried it on a Blaster (Not a fan of the AT-), so I can't say anything about how it changes their game at all... But it's useful for keeping things from running off on a Mastermind. It's never felt like an exploit to me because it tends to miss at least as many things (and as often-) as it hits with them. It's fun, but far from some sure-thing. As it stands now? If the current rate on test goes through, I'll probably end up respeccing my Demons/Time MM out of it. Running a +1/x6 Council scanner, I saw two or three of the goons per spawn bounce. Once. 😅