Psionic Dart for blasters--animation time increased after 2/18

[Brobespierre]

Yesterday (2/18) I noticed that the animation for psionic dart in the psychic blast primary for blasters had increased by what subjectively feels like twice the length of the old animation. My main toon is a psy/energy blaster and I've played it enough that I'm confident that the animation has changed from what it was even a day before (2/17) since it's a power I use frequently. It also seems to be longer than almost any of the other powers in the psychic blast set, and no other powers feel any different. I don't have any hard data because I never measured the animation time before yesterday, but I am certain that it's changed since two days ago and it's not a change mentioned in the patch notes for 2/18. 

 

UPDATE: It looks like it's only the "palm assault" customization options for psionic dart that are locking in to the unusually long animation time. Maybe the other reports of issues with psychic blast are related to them all using that palm assault animation, which has somehow gotten tweaked? @Rigel Kent discovered this and mentioned it below and I confirmed that on my toon the non-palm assault customization options work as they did before 2/18.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Brobespierre

[Trickshooter]

All Blaster tier 1 powers have a standardized cast time of 1 second. Can you check the power info tab and see if it shows a cast time longer than that?

[Brobespierre]

It does show an activation time of 1 second. I just tried some crude testing by disabling enhancements and queuing up two attacks, starting with psionic dart, and gauging how long it would take for the second attack to fire by using the recharge timer underneath the power. It looks like psionic dart is taking about 1.5 seconds to cast based on that admittedly imprecise experiment I just ran.

[Trickshooter]

53 minutes ago, Brobespierre said:

It does show an activation time of 1 second. I just tried some crude testing by disabling enhancements and queuing up two attacks, starting with psionic dart, and gauging how long it would take for the second attack to fire by using the recharge timer underneath the power. It looks like psionic dart is taking about 1.5 seconds to cast based on that admittedly imprecise experiment I just ran.

Well, server timing would make a 1 second animation take about ~1.2 seconds to actually complete, so it's not improbable that it would look like 1.5 seconds using the in-game recharge timers to measure, which themselves can be off for the same reason.

 

An actual dev would need to check, but I don't think there's anything they could have done that would have accidentally increased Psionic Dart's cast time, as that's a manually set value. Someone would have had to change it deliberately.

 

Edit: Hmm... might be some kind of network issue with Psychic Blast for Blasters overall, and not specifically cast times: 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Trickshooter

[Brobespierre]

44 minutes ago, Trickshooter said:

Well, server timing would make a 1 second animation take about ~1.2 seconds to actually complete, so it's not improbable that it would look like 1.5 seconds using the in-game recharge timers to measure, which themselves can be off for the same reason.

 

An actual dev would need to check, but I don't think there's anything they could have done that would have accidentally increased Psionic Dart's cast time, as that's a manually set value. Someone would have had to change it deliberately.

 

Edit: Hmm... might be some kind of network issue with Psychic Blast for Blasters overall, and not specifically cast times: 

 

Good point on the server timing discrepancy, and thank you for linking that report as well! I agree with you that it would be really weird for this to have been a deliberate change, which means that your network issue theory has more explanatory power. I did play around with some other blasters and the "lag" seems exclusive to my psi/ toon so far.

[Kai Moon]

I noticed something similar on my /psi dom.

 

Standard psi dart animation seems okay. Hard to say, I didn't take exact stopwatch measurements.

 

With bright palm assault or dark palm assault power customization, though, the animation is really, obviously, too long. Don't even need a stopwatch, it's 2 seconds or more.

 

@BrobespierreDo you have a power customization on your blaster?

[Brobespierre]

That was exactly it, @Rigel Kent! The uncustomized animation and the customizable "psychic blast" animation both fire off with the rhythm I've been familiar with on this toon, and it's only the palm assault powers that have him stand there with his arm out for way too long. I'll update the main post. Good catch!

[Zed]

Adding my recent findings to this.

The issue (issues ?) with psionic dart is visible ONLY with bright/dark palm assault customization, "lag" included. The regular one is fine.
The same pattern applies to Sonic Attacks' Shriek on blasters - maybe the animation is shared between them ?

 

[Goat]

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.

 

 

[Bartacus]

Also confirming for shriek on sonic attack. I just played my sonic defender and the activation time is WAY longer than usual. 

[Dark Current]

Do you think the devs thought Psi Dart was part of the Regen set? That would explain the stealth nerf.