issue 27 Patch Notes for April 20th, 2021 - Issue 27, Page 2

[arcane]

10 hours ago, gec72 said:

 

The effect is neat, but functionally I'm not a fan. I do not want it to pull mobs -- which I have immobilized (often in a patch of freezing rain) -- TOWARDS me. I built for ranged defense for a reason.

I have been TPing the pet into the middle of the mob or resummoning it there to capitalize on the effect, which works like a charm.

What’s the radius on this thing though? Surely there’s a happy medium where a Sing entering the fight from 60-80’ range wouldn’t have to pose a problem while still leaving a wide ~25-40’ pull radius to allow the awesome new effect to work? I’d say *if* the radius is higher than 40’, first fine-tuning should be to bring it down to that. If it’s already that low... idk that I’d want to suggest a nerf to this awesome feature.

[gec72]

9 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Adjust tactics, back up.

 

Oh, I'll do that. Just after running a Grav/Storm to 50 originally and now recreating her and getting her up to 40, it is going to take some adjustment. Also in some map configurations, you can only back up so far (turns, corners, caves).

 

26 minutes ago, arcane said:

I have been TPing the pet into the middle of the mob or resummoning it there to capitalize on the effect, which works like a charm.

What’s the radius on this thing though? Surely there’s a happy medium where a Sing entering the fight from 60-80’ range wouldn’t have to pose a problem while still leaving a wide ~25-40’ pull radius to allow the awesome new effect to work? I’d say *if* the radius is higher than 40’, first fine-tuning should be to bring it down to that. If it’s already that low... idk that I’d want to suggest a nerf to this awesome feature.

 

Not quite sure on the radius. My typical way to handle a group is to hit them with Crushing Field, drop Freezing Rain, then cycle Gravity Distortion/Lift/Propel (and tornado/lightning storm if I really want some chaos/need to whittle down a boss/EB). In any event I want everyone in front of me, at a comfortable distance. I guess I'll need to play with that distance when I can.

 

I've never TP'd Singy (or as I've named it, "Big Wisp"), but I do like employing Wormhole to bring mobs to me (mostly to separate groups). I'll probably need to be careful with that now too, to not port them within Singy's gravitational radius.

Edited April 25, 2021 by gec72

[arcane]

Even though I already have 3 Grav trollers (and 3 storms too), the change actually makes me want to make a Grav/Storm to see how much extra DPS the vacuum pull brings out of your storms.
 

But yes, I would absolutely recommend being more intentional about Wormhole usage, consider resummoning the pet mid mob when available, and, if both those options don’t do the trick entirely, look at TP Target, which no longer has an interrupt time and is a very quick way to drop Sing right where you want him.

Edited April 25, 2021 by arcane

[Sarrate]

5 hours ago, arcane said:

What’s the radius on this thing though?

 

Looking at Singularity in CoD, it's Gravitational Pull has a radius of 45 ft, with the pull effect being lessened the further away mobs are. I'm not sure how to interpret the  "dup()" in the expression though. @UberGuy?

[UberGuy]

5 minutes ago, Sarrate said:

 

Looking at Singularity in CoD, it's Gravitational Pull has a radius of 45 ft, with the pull effect being lessened the further away mobs are. I'm not sure how to interpret the  "dup()" in the expression though. @UberGuy?

 

It seems to be a shorthand way to duplicate the most recent value on the expression stack. I think it's being used as handy way to square the value.

 

If I'm right about that, I don't think I'm displaying it in a sensible way on CoD. 

[Sarrate]

19 minutes ago, UberGuy said:

It seems to be a shorthand way to duplicate the most recent value on the expression stack. I think it's being used as handy way to square the value.

 

Gotcha, that's kinda what I was thinking, but it's the first time I've ever seen it used, so I wasn't for sure. Thought you may have had more experience / exposure to it.

 

Thanks!

[UberGuy]

Yeah, that's what it does.

So I run the expressions through an algebraic simplifier that does things like flatten nested parenthesis, and it's writing "x squared" as "x**2".

 

The raw expression in postfix looks like this: 38 distance 7 - - 19 / dup dup * *

Converted to "raw" infix, it looks like this: ((38 - (distance - 7)) / 19) * (dup() * dup())

 

Basically, dup() should be replaced by the expression as seen up to that point. Without doing it for you during parsing, it's kind of weird to grok when showing things infix notation the way CoD does. (The game's expression parser works on postfix notation.)

 

What it's really doing is this:

 

(38 - (distance - 7)) / 19)^3
 

I'll see if I can't get the CoD expression parser to be smarter about displaying what it's really doing there, instead of displaying dup() as a black box function.

 

Edit: Bleh. Fixing that will suck a little bit. I thought I had written the infix parser using a stack, but I wrote it using recursion. So the code presently has no idea what the current expression looks like when it hits dup.

 

(There are actually two stack manipulation functions: dup and drop. Drop is kind of the opposite of dup - it just discards the top of the eval stack. No idea if that's actually used anywhere. Edit2: Nope, it's not)

Edited April 25, 2021 by UberGuy

[KelvinKole]

On 4/20/2021 at 9:30 AM, Jimmy said:

Infiltration

• Replaces Invisibility as Concealment's T3 power
  • If you previously had Invisibility, you will now have Infiltration
• Grants a run and jump bonus similar to Ninja Run
• Grants out-of-combat stealth
  • 36ft in PvE, 389ft in PvP (the same values as Stealth before this patch)
• Grants 1.75% out of combat defense

So toggling on infiltration detoggles Energy Cloak on my brute, and vice versa. Not sure how it's working with Cloak of Darkness, Field Operative, etc. Or area stealth buffs like Arctic Fog, Steamy Mist, etc. But I wasn't expecting the exclusivity with Energy Cloak. Seems like a bug?

[Wavicle]

11 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

So toggling on infiltration detoggles Energy Cloak on my brute, and vice versa. Not sure how it's working with Cloak of Darkness, Field Operative, etc. Or area stealth buffs like Arctic Fog, Steamy Mist, etc. But I wasn't expecting the exclusivity with Energy Cloak. Seems like a bug?

Travel powers are no longer mutually exclusive.

Stealth powers still are.

 

So Infiltration will stay on with Combat Jumping, but not Energy Cloak.

It's not a bug. They have indicated they MAY make Stealth powers do the same thing, but not yet.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Wavicle

[Wavicle]

17 hours ago, Cinnder said:

I view a lot of this update as being in the Fixin' What Ain't Broke category (esp travel power changes)

Since the changes established that p2w options are not to be as good as actual travel powers, I cannot agree with this.

[Squeak]

 since hover and fly dont turn each other off, fly tends to have the hover animation now, is there a way to get the fly animation to overide the hover animation instead of the other way around, or am i just gonna need to get used to turning hover off to get the fly animation

 

[Wavicle]

Just now, Squeak said:

 since hover and fly dont turn each other off, fly tends to have the hover animation now, is there a way to get the fly animation to overide the hover animation instead of the other way around, or am i just gonna need to get used to turning hover off to get the fly animation

 

There are options in the costume editor to select one animation or the other.

[Squeak]

Just now, Wavicle said:

There are options in the costume editor to select one animation or the other.

ty i will go investigate

 

[ZorkNemesis]

I'm not sure if this has been brought up already but maybe giving Singularity a gravity vortex was a bad idea.  Not necessarily from the players perspective, but i'm more talking about Family Consiglieres who are also capable of summoning them (and Kadabra Kill I guess).  I went into the Family Raid event in St. Marital, which has three Consiglieres inside the building, and all three of them summon Singularities.  I ended up being caught in between two of them and was constantly flying around and orbiting them, which made it hell to keep attacking targets with my Scrapper melee reach, to say nothing about the rapid camera movement and getting it caught along nearby walls.  Maybe critter Singularities shouldn't have that effect, especially since Repel protection is very rare (Break Frees have it, but otherwise it's only found in Shield, Stone, and Energy, as well as Kinetics) and as far as I know no other PvE foe in the game has access to a proper Repel.

 

Edited April 26, 2021 by ZorkNemesis

[Wilky]

On 4/20/2021 at 3:43 PM, Bionic_Flea said:

But Jimmy, how am I supposed to read all this and still have time to play?

 

I read and i play in my head.

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, ZorkNemesis said:

I'm not sure if this has been brought up already but maybe giving Singularity a gravity vortex was a bad idea.  Not necessarily from the players perspective, but i'm more talking about Family Consiglieres who are also capable of summoning them (and Kadabra Kill I guess).  I went into the Family Raid event in St. Marital, which has three Consiglieres inside the building, and all three of them summon Singularities.  I ended up being caught in between two of them and was constantly flying around and orbiting them, which made it hell to keep attacking targets with my Scrapper melee reach, to say nothing about the rapid camera movement and getting it caught along nearby walls.  Maybe critter Singularities shouldn't have that effect, especially since Repel protection is very rare (Break Frees have it, but otherwise it's only found in Shield, Stone, and Energy, as well as Kinetics) and as far as I know no other PvE foe in the game has access to a proper Repel.

 

:O

[Coyotedancer]

In before the Usual Suspects chime in that the answer is "Find a team".... 😝

[Apparition]

5 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

I'm not sure if this has been brought up already but maybe giving Singularity a gravity vortex was a bad idea.  Not necessarily from the players perspective, but i'm more talking about Family Consiglieres who are also capable of summoning them (and Kadabra Kill I guess).  I went into the Family Raid event in St. Marital, which has three Consiglieres inside the building, and all three of them summon Singularities.  I ended up being caught in between two of them and was constantly flying around and orbiting them, which made it hell to keep attacking targets with my Scrapper melee reach, to say nothing about the rapid camera movement and getting it caught along nearby walls.  Maybe critter Singularities shouldn't have that effect, especially since Repel protection is very rare (Break Frees have it, but otherwise it's only found in Shield, Stone, and Energy, as well as Kinetics) and as far as I know no other PvE foe in the game has access to a proper Repel.

 

YMMV.  I ran an Operative Renault SF last week (which has both Longbow and The Family), and my Blaster was pulled by multiple Singularities on multiple occasions.  I thought that it was hilarious.  It provides a new challenge, requires new tactics, and is something other than a face roll on keyboard smash.

[Templarstone]

6 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

I'm not sure if this has been brought up already but maybe giving Singularity a gravity vortex was a bad idea.  Not necessarily from the players perspective, but i'm more talking about Family Consiglieres who are also capable of summoning them (and Kadabra Kill I guess).  I went into the Family Raid event in St. Marital, which has three Consiglieres inside the building, and all three of them summon Singularities.  I ended up being caught in between two of them and was constantly flying around and orbiting them, which made it hell to keep attacking targets with my Scrapper melee reach, to say nothing about the rapid camera movement and getting it caught along nearby walls.  Maybe critter Singularities shouldn't have that effect, especially since Repel protection is very rare (Break Frees have it, but otherwise it's only found in Shield, Stone, and Energy, as well as Kinetics) and as far as I know no other PvE foe in the game has access to a proper Repel.

 

It's a great thing , adds a need for more tactical play and what is that thing melee players always say to "squishies" when they come on here talking about the enemy CC giving them trouble oh yeah " bring Break Frees" . 

 

 

 

Your inspection tray is your personal support team. Just like you know some mobs have the potential to blind and you might bring a yellow, now certain mobs maybe you need a break free or two or target and take out  and cc the member of the mob that is going to give you trouble.

 

 

 

2 mob groups maybe having to use a break free on because of singi > every mob group in the game you may  need to use a  break free for because they all have cc that will affect you 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Templarstone

[Luminara]

I fiddled with the new Singularity a bit on my Gravity/TA controller.  Found that if the pet was above critters, it would pull them underneath it and trap them there.  They weren't Held or Immobilized, but they couldn't escape the reverse Repel.  Not quite as beneficial as actual mez, since it didn't enable Containment, but it has me thinking about respecing the build into the Flight pool just so I can leverage this aspect of Singularity more effectively.

 

That makes two aspects of this update which are prompting me to take travel powers.  And I can't say I dislike it.

[Uun]

9 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

it's only found in Shield, Stone, and Energy

plus Invulnerability and Willpower

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

plus Invulnerability and Willpower

And kinetics, maybe somewhere else too

Edited April 26, 2021 by Wavicle

[ZorkNemesis]

2 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

And kinetics, maybe somewhere else too

 

I mentioned Kinetics, it's included in Increase Density.

 

1 hour ago, Uun said:

plus Invulnerability and Willpower

 

Hmm, the tooltips and descriptions don't mention that, but CityOfData shows Repel protrction so I can see why I missed those.  Still not a terribly common effect to resist.

[Wavicle]

8 minutes ago, ZorkNemesis said:

 

I mentioned Kinetics, it's included in Increase Density.

 

 

Hmm, the tooltips and descriptions don't mention that, but CityOfData shows Repel protrction so I can see why I missed those.  Still not a terribly common effect to resist.

Neither is confusion or fear, and neither comes up in the game very often. Neither will this.

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

plus Invulnerability and Willpower

 

And Trick Arrow and Electrical Affinity.

 

Honestly, it's fine.  There are plenty of avenues of escaping Repel, and for those power sets that don't have any Repel protection, then use new strategies, (including Break Frees).