Rant & Rave - Page 2 is out

[Taboo]

Lots of amazesauce in page 2. LOTS. Plenty to like. Some head scratchers, and some wiffs.

 

You a scrapper who utilized epics snipes.. so sorry.

You a scrapper who utilized invisibility or afterburner.. oops.

Hey PvP got quite a bit of attention the past two big 'patches' but the market still has a couple nasty bugs.. priorities fools!

 

Luckily Respecs are easily acquired.

[Grindingsucks]

1 hour ago, Taboo said:

Lots of amazesauce in page 2. LOTS. Plenty to like. Some head scratchers, and some wiffs.

 

You a scrapper who utilized epics snipes.. so sorry.

You a scrapper who utilized invisibility or afterburner.. oops.

Hey PvP got quite a bit of attention the past two big 'patches' but the market still has a couple nasty bugs.. priorities fools!

 

Luckily Respecs are easily acquired.

The snipes... yeah, okay.  I can grok why some people might be a little bit bummed about the changes.

 

But help me understand why invisibility or afterburner are less usable/effective now- because I just don't get it.  🤔  

[tidge]

I'm non-plussed about the "normalization" of ranges for (fast) Blaster Snipes. My annoyance was solidified during a mission that included Council Marksmen in a large room: I REALLY did not appreciate that my Blaster couldn't shoot back at them without either moving towards them or waiting for the Snipe to be slow... assuming that they didn't hit me and put me back into "fast snipe" mode.

[Onlyasandwich]

There is plenty to be excited about here, and a few items that I know make some unhappy, but one things stands above all others for me!

 

Enhancement boosters now don't require you to go clicky clicky wait for combine animation click fifty times to apply! It literally takes me like 1/10th the amount of time to boost. I would always sort of dread that final polishing step on my level 50 builds, but this is so much better.

 

Thank you Homecoming team.

 

[ZekeStenzland]

Mostly amazing. 
 

But a moment of silence for the Shinobi movement buff. From better than Ninja Run with 100% uptime to same as Swift with 66% uptime. I’ll get over it. 

[Glacier Peak]

This is a great Page addition to Issue 27. Quality of life improvements galore. The Devs and Homecoming volunteer staff are really hitting home runs with their attention to detail and integrating community feedback. I can say without hesitation that this game is in the right hands.

[Gulbasaur]

I can mystic fly slightly faster now and the Recall Friend that isn't called Recall Friend anymore feels much smoother, so I am not complaining. 

[Hew]

Sorcery pool is pretty awesome with the arcane power and enflame and rune of protection!

 

and i LOVE infiltrate

[BjorJlen]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

This is a great Page addition to Issue 27. Quality of life improvements galore. The Devs and Homecoming volunteer staff are really hitting home runs with their attention to detail and integrating community feedback. I can say without hesitation that this game is in the right hands.

 

   Quoted for fact and emphasis! So no complaints ever from me twords any of them or about a game that came back when everyone (including me) thought it was dead and cried... So its always important to keep a balanced view on these things, because it could be a lot worse... a LOT worse... then it is... You keep on rockin @Glacier Peak, cause your cool (see what I did there...? Cool... Glacier... lol. Sometimes I just crack me up...😄

 

[Judasace]

Main thing I don't like is that the animations are all wonky with Power Slide and Ninja Run together...they're not even consistently wonky. My character will twitch in and out of their stance if standing still, and sometimes will do the flipping jumps and sometimes will do normal jumps under the same circumstances. It's really janky and takes the polish off of something that worked before in order to...what? Have the powers not stack? Feels very amateurish and untested for no real benefit.

[Grindingsucks]

Why would you ever power slide + ninja run?  Just sprint + ninja run.

[BjorJlen]

2 minutes ago, Grindingsucks said:

Why would you ever power slide + ninja run?  Just sprint + ninja run.

 

   I was thinking the same thing too. Though if @Judasace is right about this ("My character will twitch in and out of their stance if standing still, and sometimes will do the flipping jumps and sometimes will do normal jumps under the same circumstances."), then that just makes me want to create a NEW character called Spaz-Man. I mean doing flipping jumps randomly while sstanding still?!? That just screams fun all over the place lol...

 

   So someone make Spaz-Man and use power slide + ninja run before I do! (I gotta control my altitis somehow ya know lol)...😋

 

Peace...

[Uruare]

My scrapper's snipe now hits a little more like a pool noodle, but I don't really care.   Its a fast ranged attack that still hits hard enough for me to feel like I'm kind of cheating the system on a scrapper, and its muling an Armageddon set for no good reason other than moar recharge moar better and lol proc.  

 

Everything else is great about this update in my never-humble opinion, and I just don't feel all that fussed over the snipe changes.   Fast snipe range being reduced to normal ranged attack instead of snipe distance is meh...but then I move a bit and shoot the thing I was gonna shoot anyway and life goes on.

There are two molehills on this mountain of goodies.  I'll somehow survive.

[America's Angel]

Okay so a few people have said Scrapper snipes are nerfed. So let me jump on this before the forum rumour mill does its usual thing of parroting objectively incorrect information. Snipes haven't been nerfed. The Mace and Mu snipes have been bugfixed, and ALL snipes (as well as all epic attacks) have been buffed.

 

Here are the specifics:

 

CHANGE #1 - BUG FIXES:

• Stalker/Scrapper > Mace Mastery > Mace Beam: Fixed numerous bugs in the crit damage.
• Stalker/Scrapper > Mu Mastery > Zapp: Fixed a bug where this version of Zapp would have a projectile delay on it's damage despite the power not using a projectile:
  • Scrapper Only: Fixed a bug that was causing the fast version of this power inflict slow-version criticals

CHANGE #2 - ATO BUFF:

• Scrapper ATOs and Shinobi-Iri
  • Fixed a bug that prevented most Epic pool attacks from having their crit rate increased by these in PvP

 

...what this means is that if you trigger the critical strikes proc, your snipe will have a 53% chance of doing a critical. (In Page 1, you could only have a 5% chance, because it would ignore the Scrapper ATOs.)

 

This is a HUGE buff.

 

Read the patch notes:
 

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by America's Angel

[Shenanigunner]

Well, I guess my evening will be spent updating the Guide. Some cool new commands and features...

[BjorJlen]

2 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Snipes haven't been nerfed. The Mace and Mu snipes have been bugfixed, and ALL snipes (as well as all epic attacks) have been buffed.

 

Read the patch notes.

 

   Quoted for emphasis... 👍

 

Peace...

[Taboo]

No need to post if you've come here to argue with folks that have concerns or have disappointment with a change.

Most of the changes are good and players aren't making blanket statements about the whole page.

 

@tidge but that's totally a buff if you ask @America's Angel

 

@Judasace Your mention is worth a bug post.

 

@ZekeStenzland +1

 

@Onlyasandwich booster, yep much better.

 

[Taboo]

  Awww so cute. It's confusing to these players why anyone could have a problem with one or two of the changes..

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by Taboo
others wanted to be included

[Yomo Kimyata]

There's certainly some good stuff in this patch.  My only major quibble is that now the first thing I have to do when I log on to every alt is to go to Null and disable the movement tray.  On the plus side, now I use that opportunity to do all the other Null stuff I normally disregard, like turn off Mystic Fortune, etc.

[tidge]

21 minutes ago, Taboo said:

No need to post if you've come here to argue with folks that have concerns or have disappointment with a change.

Most of the changes are good and players aren't making blanket statements about the whole page.

 

@tidge but that's totally a buff if you ask @America's Angel

 

 

To echo, my comment on the Snipe changes was about the range reduction for my Blaster's (Fast) Snipe, not a complaint about a Scrapper/Stalker Epic Snipe's internal change affecting %procs. If someone can explain how a Blaster T5 primary power got buffed by the change, I will patiently read.

[macskull]

10 hours ago, Taboo said:

Lots of amazesauce in page 2. LOTS. Plenty to like. Some head scratchers, and some wiffs.

 

You a scrapper who utilized epics snipes.. so sorry.

You a scrapper who utilized invisibility or afterburner.. oops.

Hey PvP got quite a bit of attention the past two big 'patches' but the market still has a couple nasty bugs.. priorities fools!

 

Luckily Respecs are easily acquired.

1. I'm a bit confused why anyone should be apologizing for the Scrapper epic snipes, which are now correctly affected by crit chance modifiers and are no longer stuck at a 5% crit chance. If the complaint is "I can't fast snipe from 150+ feet anymore" then... eh, whatever.
2. Invisibility still functionally exists and I'm not sure why anyone would be using it except for concept purposes (and you can now customize Stealth with an "invisible" theme to cover that one) or for stealthing missions (in which case Stealth + stealth IO in a prestige sprint will exactly replicate its effects while still providing a benefit when in combat).
3. "You should fix this completely unrelated thing before working on something" is a really poor argument. The market bugs, while annoying, are easily worked around. PvP balance issues, not so much. Pretty much everything PvP-related that's been changed in the last two big updates has been things the PvP community's been asking for and was low-hanging fruit for a dev with a bit of free time.

[macskull]

4 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

To echo, my comment on the Snipe changes was about the range reduction for my Blaster's (Fast) Snipe, not a complaint about a Scrapper/Stalker Epic Snipe's internal change affecting %procs. If someone can explain how a Blaster T5 primary power got buffed by the change, I will patiently read.

The range change for fast snipes is annoying for sure, but I'd argue it's mostly because you're used to a certain behavior that's changed. It bothered me while I was testing it too but at the same time I understand why a power that functions as a standard ranged attack should have the same range as a standard ranged attack. Blaster fast snipes still get the 50% range bonus so odds are good your next snipe will get the range bonus from the first one.

[tidge]

5 minutes ago, macskull said:

The range change for fast snipes is annoying for sure, but I'd argue it's mostly because you're used to a certain behavior that's changed. It bothered me while I was testing it too but at the same time I understand why a power that functions as a standard ranged attack should have the same range as a standard ranged attack. Blaster fast snipes still get the 50% range bonus so odds are good your next snipe will get the range bonus from the first one.

 

[Taboo]

8 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

But help me understand why invisibility or afterburner are less usable/effective now- because I just don't get it.  🤔

 

There are examples of less usable/effective. Maybe not all are effected equally.

From another player:

"there's no visible indication that your stealth has been suppressed."

"At 33 or 55 (or whatever the numbers are), visual effect is the old stealth translucent. With invisibility, if you do something that suppresses it or you get hit with splash from an attack, you go from invisible to "oops there I am". That aspect got me killed several times yesterday, that I didn't realize I was visible. It's also an issue where "I've activated stealth and start sprinting through the base - but the full stealth hasn't kicked in yet so I'm dead" (at the time, of course, I had no clue that I needed to wait 10 seconds after activating the power)"

Afterburner was formerly a toggle, it is now a 30 sec power with a 60 sec recharge. (why is the one minute recharge necessary?.. PvP is the only thing I can think of)

Afterburner had defense removed, added to another power, which will never have the same level of defense available in combat.

From HC Team:

"Leadership will suppress the out-of-combat defence component if it hits an allied entity"
 

[Chewburkka]

6 hours ago, BjorJlen said:

 Quoted for emphasis... 👍

Quoted for annoyance... is it working? 😝

But seriously, I have no beef with the new page. Mmmm, beef...