Shin Magmus

If you haven't heard, all of the Giant Monsters got rebalanced and drop guaranteed Monstrous Aether (among potential other things) now. However, unique to Lusca is that each of her tentacles yields 2 Reward Merits when defeated, for a total kill bounty of 22 Reward Merits and the Monstrous Aether. That's a lot, and the fight is now very profitable. ...But it's also very long. Worse: it's very long for a bad reason that kills fun and enjoyment. Every time you kill a tentacle, Lusca submerges to respawn: in either the same spot or 1 of 2 possible near spots. The team backs up and starts looking around for Lusca to reappear so they can continue the fight. This waiting period occurs 8 times during the fight, and each time it happens: people get bored and tired of waiting. The actual forced delay of completely non-interactive non-gameplay is about 20 seconds each time. This waiting around serves no purpose in the modern version of the game, and the power level characters are currently at. Recommendation: reduce this wait period by at least 50%. I'd go as far as to say that it should only be 5 seconds total of forced waiting, before you're "allowed" to find Lusca and resume the fight. Changing this will only improve the game and reduce tedium. If there's a coding reason that this is difficult to do... well it's still a positive and important change to make so I hope the dev team can figure it out. There's no downside to this suggested change and it doesn't need to impact her global spawn timer either.

Hard Mode (now Advanced Mode) is some of the most fun I have in this game. You can bring anything realistically to 1 star or 2 star, need solid builds and incarnates but not specific ATs yet for 3 star, and then finally you need a good team comp for 4 star. To go fast and smooth on a 4 star, the "meta" offensive and defensive buffs/debuffs just make the team more fast-paced and less tedious. OP could be out here getting tons of Prismatic Aethers and playing their MM on 2 stars all day: they'd just rather sit and complain.

It's both. There are regular old Melee builds who can just grab some Envenomed Daggers and solo most GMs as well.

I appreciate your work on the GMs. I also play on Everlasting, but I don't GM Hunt on a random character who is subject to the rules of what the enemy does. Instead, I GM Hunt on my Ill/Traps where I play by a set of unfair rules that greatly disincentivize even having something like a Tank, because they'll just overlap with my Phantom Army and be subject to taking dmg (pointlessly). I'm sure that with a more evenly balanced (or random) mix of ATs, it might be necessary to strategize like you mean and aim the Tentacle Cone for example. I definitely think that such strategies are cool in theory and appreciate the work you did on the fights. But anecdotally... I can power through and ignore the mechanics of almost every GM this patch and only have to respect 2 or attacks in any way (such as Paladin's Coil Drain, which I dodge). Even the Arachnos Flyer, which should be VERY difficult for Illu Control because of the swarm of adds, was not hard for me to solo. I haven't even finished my Incarnates all to T4 yet, nor are they truly optimized for DPS, because I still play the character on some other content. Here is a recent video of a GM that people maybe don't fight as often, Deathsurge: I am glad you're listening to the player feedback and nerfing Pumpkin Patch in relation to MM pets, and I'm glad that multiple people are getting what they want. However, I just want to make it known that against the power level of players with optimized builds... GMs are still too easy. What I personally think after hunting every GM inn the game multiple times over the past 2 weeks... I think GMs need to be buffed even more both offensively and defensively. Several of them should also have Hamidon-esque properties where they can damage Phantom Army directly or do something like forcefully phase out a Player, thus truly requiring teamwork from multiple players. It's my opinion that the ability to casually solo almost every GM in about 3 minutes still, means they have not been tuned upwards harshly enough. Is that a consensus among all players and all devs: certainly not! Yet, I feel my video speaks for itself.

Title says it all: Sleep Grenade is not dealing any damage now in most circumstances. Testers in Discord have already figured out the issue and posted it, but here it is again: Sleep Grenade now has a flag where the damage only occurs IF: target is held. This is clearly supposed to be the flag the devs wanted to add to Tear Gas to give it damage. Tear Gas does not seem to have its damage, probably directly related: incorrect pointer or inheritance. Why the devs thought that Arse Control needed a 7th convoluted IF:THEN conditional effect on another power is beyond my ability to reasonably understand, but here we are. Hopefully they can fix this one quickly since some people really relied on that Sleep Grenade damage at early and mid levels to get any clearing done.

Yep, good thing it's not an auto kill on players though, just a kill over 4-10 seconds depending on your max hp, with plenty of time to move. As for pets, the power should simply be coded to deal ABSOLUTELY reduced dmg to all pets just like Blue Fire on Apex set as a precedent.

The entire tone of this post, and all your replies, is incredibly mean and written from some sort of very warped perspective that I'd love for you to elaborate on. Giant Monsters were punching bags, and they were made harder across the entire game as a fix to this issue: yes, it was an issue. However, after the buffs, many characters (such as my Ill/Traps) can still solo most GMs in about 3 minutes, less if I use Lore Pets and/or other pets. That's just talking completely solo, which is an aberration and should be treated thusly. With a team of about 5-6 random players and builds: GMs are very manageable even after the buffs. With 9+ players in a league of any size: GMs go right back to being punching bags. I see a LOT of people forming Leagues to go after... well... basically every GM in the game now. I've GM-hunted relentlessly (across the full range of team sizes) over the past 2 weeks. I can confidently say that a few enemies having one or two moves that could be called as "Hard Mode Mechanic" is NOT a "terrible design choice", as it adds one more minor step of engagement from the players. It's unfortunate that one class might struggle more on one GM, but your blanket statements about the game aren't true objectively and really aren't even true subjectively if you ask the hundreds of players I've encountered in my GM teams. It's very possible for about 16 random players to just swarm a GM like piranha and still kill it in less than 30s, with no trouble, even now.

This seems like an easy fix and the root cause is identified: do a consistency pass and push it in the very next patch.

MENU OPTION PLEASE: This. It feels awful having my mobility restricted and my speed cut because I didn't go to Null the Gull yet on my alt, or I forgot one of my 8 mandatory clicks while I was down there talking to Null.

Most real comment in this thread. Scrapper at or near the dmg cap, procs Crit Strikes off of Follow Up, then hits 5-10 enemies for literally THOUSANDS of total damage and one-shots several of them... I flee.

Actual healing, Regen buffs, +Absorb especially (Nature and Elec Affinity shine a lot here), and debuffs to the enemy stats to make them more manageable to kill quickly as well as halting their regen while your team has to reposition.

I get out of Pumpkin Patch on my Illu Controller reliably when fighting Eochai, even if it knocks me down once. I have to move in to place Poison Trap, I get hurt, then I back out and am still alive. It doesn't kill you before you can run out of it. It's not even that much damage in the grand scheme of things: it just forces you to move (and the intent is that you also move Eochai out of it, but you can beat him even if he doesn't, depending on your character/team).

Just throwing in my anecdotal experience that refreshing to get a price history to show up is also worse for me after the patch. It's maybe like... 20%-30% less likely to show me any price history at all on average. Hard to quantify since I never really measured how much time it wastes before, but it definitely feels worse.

It sounds to me like you're a bit more "lazy" than the devs if you hate ever having any content give you any incentive to move around: and you prefer easy fights where you can just sit still and push buttons while ignoring anything the enemies do...

The Hard Modes (now Advanced Modes) are fine. On top of simply being some of the most fun that I have in the game right now, they fulfill an important niche in the game's design. They try to make something actually hard in a game often complained about by being too easy, but what they really do is make team comps and builds actually matter more (compared to most content, where team comp is completely irrelevant). I also think that all the increased rewards from Advanced Mode enemies are good from a game design perspective, encouraging players to fight through enemies that are buffed to be "slower" fights, by giving players incentives so they still make money/etc. "faster". Lastly I want to echo that 2-star Advanced Mode is insanely easy when you're used to 4-star, and others have mentioned this. Decent builds on a not-completely-stupid PUG should have no issues clearing 1-star and 2-star. I just did a 2-star ITF recently and it was smooth sailing, death-less, big chillin (since many of us brought our 4-star characters).

Hilarious, great find. This put a smile on my face. Finally, the REAL Hard Mode.

I have nothing to add, this is the correct take. Sorry to the players who feel that *one* of their sets should have kept breaking established formula, but -22.5% Res is what you get from AoE debuffs on Corr/MM/Controller. The sole exceptions to this are both HC reworks but they math out to similar totals: which are Trick Arrow having the -Res in the AoE power biased up (and the -Res in net arrow biased down), and Force Field... which has lower values split across its 2 powers because that set is strong enough now and would be pretty insane with higher debuffs. Now Sleet isn't still just inexplicably much better than Tar Patch, Enervating Field, Slowed Response, Anguishing Cry, Melt Armor, etc. Instead, Sleet is the same as them. Welcome down to the level you should have been at.

More options is always better I guess, and players may prefer to navigate via keyboard rather than mouse clicks.

FINALLY, The Glorious Windows 95 Resurrection!

I also thought that the massive damage potential would be better if it was mostly only relevant on high HP Targets: the type of enemy where being a "weak" set becomes most apparent. By contrast, Broadsword probably won't have the ability to attack anything below Boss rank enough times to get to a forced 100% Sever chance, but I felt that was fine. Yeah it will "lose" the stacks, but with DPA adjustments throughout the set it isn't reliant on them. This also makes it feel different from Tidal Power / Combo Points.

"Guys, we want you to farm Giant Monsters and engage with a new system." Okay. Shin respecs his Ill/Traps into being a GM Hunter and begins joining the playerbase farming all the GMs. "What the fuck are you doing? Stop farming GMs!" Devs immediately nerf Adamastor twice, Deathsurge, and I'm sure more to come. ...What do you actually want from us? Every nerf to how people can get Monstrous Aether is just an indirect buff to AE Farming by direct comparison; back to the grind okay? Here I go.

A foreword from the author... Hi there, I'm the Mr. Shin who likes it when bad and underperforming sets get buffed. We've seen some incredible reworks of underperforming sets so far on HC: with the most recent one applicable to this topic being Battle Axe. On top of bringing the numbers up in a generic way, this rework added some utility to the set via Axe Cyclone, and gave it an identity to differentiate it from other sets via the new Targeted AoE vector on some of the attacks. I see these changes and I agree that sets need something unique to give them an identity and make them feel different from other sets. Now it's time for a bit of history... Did you know that at one point: Katana was literally just an identical clone of Broadsword? It's true, and the live devs added entirely new animations to differentiate the sets. They went with a faster/lighter theme for the set but accidentally made it have UNIVERSALLY BETTER DPA ON EVERY POWER EXCEPT THE T1, and simultaneously gave most of the Katana powers lower CDs than the Broadsword ones. This resulted in near-universal advantages to playing Katana over Broadsword. Examine this color-coded table (Brute dmg was used for reference): At this point Broadsword was bad, but still barely tolerable because Broadsword hit for uniquely huge numbers on Scrappers... but history has long since changed that. Scrappers now have access to Stone Melee, Energy Melee, War Mace, Battle Axe, and Titan Weapons: quite the pick of sets with a super-hard-hitting attack to really Clobber an enemy. At the same time, non-Scrappers have gained access to Broadsword through powerset proliferation. Broadsword is currently mockinglingly referred to as "Badsword" by many players😔. Read on below to see how I would fix Broadsword. Fixed Broadsword By: Shin_Rekkoha (Shin Magmus) New Mechanics: Laceration & Sever The logic behind this design change is really very simple: give Broadsword another BIG NUMBER to chonk with, enabling players to enjoy seeing a massive spike of damage in one hit. Unlike something purely random, it is possible to manipulate the chance of this bonus damage or even guarantee it, if the user so-chooses. It fulfills a twin purpose by adding incentive to use the Broadsword T2 attack and other faster-but-weaker attacks. Parry also benefits from these changes. "Laceration": Every damaging Broadsword attack (even Parry) applies 1 stack of Laceration to the target hit, instantly. AoE Broadsword attacks apply 1 stack to every target hit. Assassin's Slash for Stalkers uniquely applies 2 stacks of Laceration. This debuff is automatic, instant, and deals no damage on its own. Think of this as a largely invisible mechanic that operates on the same rules as "Assassin's Focus". Laceration caps at 4 stacks, and attacks that can proc Sever will instead proc a Laceration stack if they fail their Sever roll. "Sever": Disembowel and Head Splitter now have a %chance to inflict a large spike of bonus damage. Whenever these attacks Sever, the bonus damage appears accompanied by floating text above the enemy. This effect consumes all Lacerations on the target and resets the stack to 0. This damage is affected by enhancements and damage buffs, and functions like a damage proc, increasing the damage dealt by 66%. On Scrappers and Stalkers, Sever damage will also Critical Hit if the attack rolled a Critical Hit, for a potential total multiplier of x3.32 over the original base damage: Now That's a Lotta Damage! Sever Chance scales linearly: 0 Lacerations: 0% chance of Sever 1 Lacerations: 25% chance of Sever 2 Lacerations: 50% chance of Sever 3 Lacerations: 75% chance of Sever 4 Lacerations: 100% chance of Sever T1 - Hack No stat changes. *applies Laceration x1* T2 - Slash Animation time reduced from 1.584s -> 1.32s, resulting in DPA increase of 20%. *applies Laceration x1* T3 - Slice Animation time reduced from 2.244s -> 1.98s, resulting in a DPA increase of 13%. *applies Laceration x1* T4 - Build Up Standard Power. *No Changes* T5 - Parry No stat changes: This power is numerically identical to Katana's Divine Avalanche, and would be unfair to change without adjusting both powers. *applies Laceration x1* T6 - Confront Standard Power. *No Changes* T7 - Whirling Sword Initial damage increased by 25%, Bleed DoT unchanged, resulting in a net damage & DPA increase of 19%. *applies Laceration x1* T8 - Disembowel Damage and DPA increased by 8%. *Attempts to inflict Sever for bonus damage. If Sever fails, applies Laceration x1* T9 - Head splitter Animation time reduced from 2.508s -> 2.244s, resulting in a DPA increase of 12%. *Attempts to inflict Sever for bonus damage. If Sever fails, applies Laceration x1* STALKER ONLY - T4 - Assassin's Slash No stat changes. *applies Laceration x2* Feel free to let me know what you think of these changes. I know everyone wants the bonus damage to be called "FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM!" but the devs have rights to that term for other uses.

Genius suggestion by a metaphysical God of this realm. Let's make this happen, devs.

Yeah you've got it right, none of the Clear Mind powers apply their mez protection in an AoE. Applying the good part of ID to everyone is still tedious.

Thanks for checking all of this, because it was (and is) genuinely insane that Fire Control was nerfed at all this patch. Imagine nerfing Fire Control of all things but not touching a single number on Plant Control: what a farce! I understand why some of the devs might not want non-Control ATs to get such a powerful safety net in their epics, but 0% of that decision should have ever affected Controllers and Doms.