Sniper Beta Patch Notes, June 1st 2019

[srmalloy]

All I'm reading is that Blasters might be a little less worse than melee ATs, who were gods among ants for years back on Live.

 

My AR/EM Blaster, back before the shutdown, between all her power slotting and Boost Range, had a Snipe that could hit targets out past 240 yards (LRM was, IIRC, 273 yards at max). At that range, I could get two and sometimes three Snipe shots off before my target got close enough to attack back. One of the things I used to to for amusement waiting for ITFs to start was to stand on the platform near Imperious and snipe the mobs in the plaza across the valley, where I'd be able to take down one mob (with Build Up), leaving them clueless about where the shot game from, hit another one (aggroing the spawn even if it took them down), and be able to take two more shots with Snipe before switching to my shorter-ranged attacks, and be able to finish picking off the whole spawn before they got close to the platform I was on.

 

Now, with this change, I make the first shot, and *BAM* my snipe range is cut in half, even though it will be thirty seconds or more before the mobs I aggroed can get close enough to shoot back. And with enough range, if you one-shot your target, the rest of the spawn usually won't aggro, just stand around wondering why Frank fell down until the second shot comes in. But because I fired, I have to wait for longer than the power recharge to be able to use Snipe the way I slotted it to be used.

 

Another thing I could do was to cruise Peregrine Island, using Boost Range and Snipe to take down mobs, far enough up to be immune to return fire from anything but the Nemesis Comets and the Malta Gunslingers. With this change, I shoot once, and then get forced to drop into range of their return fire if I want to continue shooting.

 

Make this an option that you can set on a character-by-character basis, perhaps, but I feel that the tradeoff of animation time for range is a gimp for insufficient utility. Having to work the tactical situation in a fight to give yourself enough time to get a snipe off in combat was part of what made a Blaster interesting to play.

[Mezmera]

As an avid dominator player I must say this impending tweak to dominator's snipe I abhor.  As stated by Leandro himself he recognizes that doms do much less damage than blasters and corrs so why cut this one nice new gift of damage down a third for us?  I'd rather you leave the recharge and damage base as is.  I never took snipe on dominators before because I was always in the mix and didn't find snipe useful.  With the insta-snipes its been such a godsend to dom damage.  Yes it's much harder to build for the to-hit on a dom and I am fine with that going in I know how to get the most out of what I can.  With the substantial damage decrease fast snipe wouldn't even be differentiated from the best regular high damage range attack in the secondary so why have it?  Doms lead in with their controls, good doms won't play right if they're sitting back and sniping before they engage in the fight.    I don't want a fast charging pitter patter, I already have access to plenty of those attacks.  I want my slow charging boom stick!

 

Maybe normalizing it across the board for all ATs like 3.0 damage scale at 15 sec recharge and a slight reduction in range and then 4.5 damage scale for slow snipe and keep the interrupt a little bit higher but less than 6.  Pool power snipes yeah sure adjust it according to not being naturally inherent to the AT. 

 

Honestly I don't want any of this to change, this whole addition of fast sniping was to make taking snipe more useful.  Yes I'm certain some changes are necessary due to probably being OP in PvP but that's the thing the devs never really grasped how to make their powers work well for both PvE and PvP.  Case in point, Energy Transfer is the riskiest attack to use because you're sacrificing a bunch of your hp to amplify the damage you do to the target and in PvE it's correctly illustrated to do more ST damage than any other attack power as it should.  In PvP because their wonky damage formulas calculates the damage you do to yourself into the damage formula to average out the damage per activation you get an ET that does more damage to you than it does the target.  Snipe was given a buff by the original devs because it mostly wasn't viable, this just feels like a big step back to that.   

[nyttyn]

Between this, and their new secondary power pools from the days of SCORE, it feels like blasters are getting a rather extreme over emphasis right now for balance tweaking, and this is just going to exacerbate it. At the moment other archetypes have enormous issues as well (Tankers, for example, pretty much have very few compelling reasons to pick a secondary not named 'Titan Weapons', Peacebringers are, uhh, peacebringers, just to name two), and this change is just going to exacerbate the balance issues already present within the various primaries and secondaries of the blaster Archetype (for example, /devices goes from 'okay I guess' to 'why?') and require yet further changes to blasters. It'd be nice if other ATs could get some love after this if it's still going through before the balance cascade this is going to cause for snipers is addressed.

 

Slow Snipe is cool at least but falls into the same issues as stalker's Hide, only way worse since it's considerably longer than the 8 seconds Stalkers have to wait for. Just takes too long to fall out of combat for it to feel good in a game that's all about GOGOGOing.

 

I also feel like this change is falling prey to the cottage rule (much as I hate the insane example the devs gave for it) pretty hard, because reducing the range for snipes is pretty immediately obviously apparent with even a few seconds of playing with it. Obviously something needs to give if snipes are always going to be instant, but such a heavy reduction in range is removing the use case, as sub optimal as it may be, of people standing far back to attempt to take foes out one by one. Between that and considerably changing how blasters currently want to build (giving them fewer options now since there's no longer a decision to be made between "do I want to go for fast snipe, pick a set that doesn't have a snipe, or just go /devices and call it a day"), it feels like this change is ultimately a net negative for the archetype.

[Neogumbercules]

I literally just made a fire/dev blaster last night to take advantage of the fast snipe with targeting drone. Oh well! It's still fun as heck.

 

Edit: just noticed the range reduction. I really think that's a step too far. It just doesn't feel like a sniper attack without extreme range. Range is one of the things that makes the power fun, and if I have to sit around for 15 seconds to snipe a runner, that's lame.

 

Also I specifically built /dev to have fast snipe, and now out of combat that fun aspect is gone. That does kinda suck.

 

Mayne just introduce that fast snipe IO and leave it at that.

 

So I guess now I'll beg for an update to trip mine, time bomb, and gum drone.

 

Trip mine - faster cast, no interrupt.

 

Time bomb - faster cast, no interrupt, allow me to trigger it somehow.

 

Gun drone - moar damage!

[Sancerre]

not a big fan of the snipe concept.  its a straight nerf to anyone that has built for it already... and in blaster /dev case they cant reasonably just respec out of a powerset.

 

slow snipe will reasonably never be used because of the nature of the game... very few people will stand around for 15 seconds to wait to snipe something (especially in parties).

 

could you perhaps make those changes tied SPECIFICALLY TO THAT IO.  that way if people want it, they can have it (reduced range, increased recharge -- i guess Dom's case is more complicated).  Point is you want this change available but you feel its necessary to introduce PENALTIES around it.  There are some powerset combinations that will leave their general build unchanged but now just have a nerfed snipe ability.  for anyone that was using tactics slotted out the wazoo to achieve instant snipe, freeing up slots might be a blessing... but the same crowd may also be upset with the reduced range and increased recharge.

[Heliopause]

As a blaster, I'm not a fan of the idea of this Snipe change. That's way too much power in one power. Especially with Recharge Rate Reduction in that set.

I'm just gonna end up going Snipe>Fireball>Blaze>Fireball>Snipe>Fireball>Blaze>Fireball>Snipe, etc...

 

I like the idea of having to save the Snipe for tactical purposes better. Picking out which minion in the crowd is the one most deserving to die before anyone else knows I'm there (and it's *always* the Sapper).

 

I worry now that this change is just going to let Blasters steamroll over everything, especially with the tweaks that seem to have been done to Endurance so I never have to stop already.

 

I have great respect and love for our amazing development team. Having said that, changing powers and assuring balance in those changes is incredibly complicated, can be fraught with unintended consequences and shouldn’t be taken lightly. I’m concerned about how vigorous the vetting process for such changes is.

[Arkterusss]

Between this, and their new secondary power pools from the days of SCORE, it feels like blasters are getting a rather extreme over emphasis right now for balance tweaking, and this is just going to exacerbate it.

 

Hit up Leandro and his Blaster fetish, and you probably have your answer.

 

Anyways, this change seems pretty bad.  Leave Snipes as is.  The new Unique IO could do something like: "Your Snipe powers have a x% chance to crit"

Or "Your Snipe powers have a x% chance to Recharge immediately" 

 

This is wonky. 

[Phoenix']

The main feature is that Snipe powers will now always be slow if you're out-of-combat (defined by not having attacked or been attacked in the last 15 seconds), and they will always be fast when in combat (defined as having attacked or having been attacked in the last 15 seconds).

 

That's a VERY LONG TIME !!! What's the point of having a slow snipe and wait for 15 seconds for it? It should be 3-5 secs ! It will create many and different strategies for every AT to use in combat...

[Arkterusss]

Quoting someone else for the 'why':

 

Because the existing system limits fast snipe to certain builds, and gives some builds perma snipe while others never see it at all. The current system demands taking certain powersets or power pools to leverage fast snipe, and requires most builds to use at least one IO.

 

The new system gives every build with a snipe the ability to use it quickly.

 

Fast snipe was created by the Paragon devs specifically to improve on the situation that basically all ranged damage sets except Ice and Fire are bad at single-target DPS compared to even fairly modest melee attack sets, because they cannot chain good DPA powers. So sets with snipes got a really good DPA power out of their snipe. (Improvements for sets with no snipe were planned - see Ice Blast.) Making that available only to very narrow or high-end build specs isn't a very effective improvement.

 

>taking tactics and like, two IO's is "HIGH END" 

 

Well,  I guess I won't be rolling /devices ever again after this patch.  Might as well just scrub it from the set list.

[CY13ERPUNK]

neat changes

 

like the idea of the 'hip-fire'

 

awesome stuff all around =]

 

gonna be interesting to try it all out =]

[Almafeta]

Massive database backend changes. The servers now support both ODBC and LibPQ, the former being recommended for Microsoft SQL Server and the latter for PostgreSQL server. There are major improvements all over that we expect will greatly help the servers when they're under load.

 

A lot more ado should be being made about this change.  It may introduce some bugs, but shifting to PostgreSQL should result in massive return on investment in terms of stability and maintenance.

[Neogumbercules]

Seems like this change is pretty universally disliked.

 

I know the instinct is to try to give and take with balance changes but this change has totally negated one of the defining (and only big advantage) features of an entire powerset in devices.

 

This is too much for what amounts to a QOL update. It's not just the nerfs, it changes themes and functionality negatively for no real reason.

 

Just introduce that IO or make snipes instant, but buff /dev if you do.

[Number Six]

My two cents to the powers designer, since I've been told you're reading this thread carefully:

 

I understand the intent here and don't entirely disagree. The 22% to-hit threshold for fast snipes is problematic for a number of reasons. It's clunky and unintuitive. It is a big performance boost but is also very binary - either you have it perma or almost never. The indicator is flaky due to floating point precision issues. And it breaks one of the fundamental design rules - creating a class-wide mechanic and locking it behind IO builds.

 

However, making fast snipes always available in combat seems to go too far in the other direction to me. It's too good of a buff and it seems only a hair away from just removing snipes altogether and replacing them with a regular attack.

 

So here's my proposal:

• Every blaster primary attack has a small chance (5 or 10%, whatever is balanced) of putting a "fast snipe" mode on the character that lights up the fast snipe indicator for a few seconds and gives you a short window of availability for it.
   
  
• The more global +ToHit buff you have, the greater this percentage becomes, scaling all the way up to 100% chance at 22% to-hit.
  

This has the advantage of not being such a huge buff at the base levels, while still allowing people who don't build for perma-snipe to have more frequent access to it. It gives to team buffs, taking powers like Tactics, and +ToHit IOs even if you're not near the magic number. It doesn't invalidate the perma-snipe builds that people have been making over the last month. And it doesn't make it seem like /Devices is getting the short end of the stick.

 

I'll also echo the chorus here of strongly disliking the nerf to range in fast snipe mode. Maybe the full range is too much, but it should definitely be more than the standard 80'.

[Auroxis]

My two cents to the powers designer, since I've been told you're reading this thread carefully:

 

I understand the intent here and don't entirely disagree. The 22% to-hit threshold for fast snipes is problematic for a number of reasons. It's clunky and unintuitive. It is a big performance boost but is also very binary - either you have it perma or almost never. The indicator is flaky due to floating point precision issues. And it breaks one of the fundamental design rules - creating a class-wide mechanic and locking it behind IO builds.

 

As stated before, you can have it at level 22 the moment you can slot SO's into Tactics and bought Kismet. No IO build required.

 

The only change needed is to make it more intuitively accessible without undermining people who already invested time into building for 22%. Buff Aim, make it last for 20 seconds or so. Make the ToHit buff on Domination last the entire duration.

[SuperPlyx]

I am questioning the fast that I have to download this whole Beta patch thing when I do not have any interest in it.My hats off to those who want to help and test things.But what about those who don't want to or have limited time or even limited storage space?Why are we being forced to download files for something we won't use? I think participating in Beta should be a choice,some sort of opt-in.

[ThePhlebotomist]

I really appreciate all the work happening.

 

However, I'm a touch worried at the sniper change -- those powers seemed like they were designed to provide extreme damage but only with the wind-up caveat. I'm glad there's a beta and hope you'll have a good avenue for feedback and the data to be able to tell if powers are OP.

 

Also, maybe, I'm just a little uncomfortable at the rate of change to powers since 1) The issues around how these changes would ever be shared out are unresolved 2) It doesn't give the playerbase much time to absorb changes to their characters.

[Jimmy]

So here's my proposal:

• Every blaster primary attack has a small chance (5 or 10%, whatever is balanced) of putting a "fast snipe" mode on the character that lights up the fast snipe indicator for a few seconds and gives you a short window of availability for it.
   
  
• The more global +ToHit buff you have, the greater this percentage becomes, scaling all the way up to 100% chance at 22% to-hit.
  

This has the advantage of not being such a huge buff at the base levels, while still allowing people who don't build for perma-snipe to have more frequent access to it. It gives to team buffs, taking powers like Tactics, and +ToHit IOs even if you're not near the magic number. It doesn't invalidate the perma-snipe builds that people have been making over the last month. And it doesn't make it seem like /Devices is getting the short end of the stick.

 

An alternative I'd suggest: A flat damage boost for snipes that scales on +ToHit. That allows sets which currently benefit from frequent or permanent fast-snipe (Looking at you, Devices) to keep their edge without needing to introduce RNG.

[Flux Vector]

I play a fortunata primarily; anecdotally speaking I can say there have been multiple people ingame at level 50 who are confused about why their snipe power changes behavior while I'm on the team giving them a bunch of tohit buffing via TT:Leadership and Mind Link.  And then are really happy that it became instant and start using it as often as they can.  Many others just don't have their snipes, most likely because it was an "almost always skip" power back on Live for a lot of folks and the fact that fast snipe exists seems not to be widely known.  I'm not going to say that these specific changes are the best idea, but I do think it does address those particular flaws.

 

More importantly in my opinion, it puts another attack in the hands of a lot of sets that don't have complete attack chains without taking powers from elsewhere or getting extremely high recharge from IO builds.  The traditional model of the ranged attack sets had 3 "standard" single targeted attacks, while the traditional model of the melee attack set had 4 - frequently the 4th being an extremely hard-hitting power.  Changing sniper attacks to be a 'tier 4' type of blast for everyone is a valid - if not obvious - means to bring some additional parity between ranged and melee classes.  I think any veteran COH player with two eyes and a brain can recognize why that parity is badly needed.

 

I understand people are concerned about their particular builds and their particular characters, but I'm also sure there will be ways you can incorporate and improve on this change with your knowledge and talents.  Getting tactics to buffed tohit rates for fast sniping imposes an endurance, slot, and powers tax on your build - what can you accomplish by moving those things elsewhere?  It may well end up being superior for your IO build.  And it definitely will be superior for the players who do not want to play with IO builds, or just aren't very good at them.  One of the Live team's ideals was not to balance around the end-game, highest tier of potential character builds and to keep the game accessible and fun at all stages.

[Pzn]

The damage nerf to dominator snipers seems a bit too harsh.  Any chance that they could have their base damage value somewhere in between the nerf and the original value?  Maybe the same base damage for dom fast snipes as blaster.

[Jaguaratron]

As noted, I have issues with the blanket "catch all" approach as one set is not the same as another, this change adds significant value to energy manipulation and its Boost Range power over the others.

[blayzemaster]

I like the philosophy of the change quite a bit as its helpful for dominators, though I can't test at the moment so some tweaking may be required.

[Pzn]

I like the philosophy of the change quite a bit as its helpful for dominators, though I can't test at the moment so some tweaking may be required.

It's a huge nerf to martial assault but a buff to the other sets.  Martial assault could already achieve 22% tohit and now the damage is being reduced to less than 2/3 of the original base value.  The recharge reduction also means that procs will occur less often.

[Sancerre]

I play a fortunata primarily; anecdotally speaking I can say there have been multiple people ingame at level 50 who are confused about why their snipe power changes behavior while I'm on the team giving them a bunch of tohit buffing via TT:Leadership and Mind Link.  And then are really happy that it became instant and start using it as often as they can.  Many others just don't have their snipes, most likely because it was an "almost always skip" power back on Live for a lot of folks and the fact that fast snipe exists seems not to be widely known.  I'm not going to say that these specific changes are the best idea, but I do think it does address those particular flaws.

 

More importantly in my opinion, it puts another attack in the hands of a lot of sets that don't have complete attack chains without taking powers from elsewhere or getting extremely high recharge from IO builds.  The traditional model of the ranged attack sets had 3 "standard" single targeted attacks, while the traditional model of the melee attack set had 4 - frequently the 4th being an extremely hard-hitting power.  Changing sniper attacks to be a 'tier 4' type of blast for everyone is a valid - if not obvious - means to bring some additional parity between ranged and melee classes.  I think any veteran COH player with two eyes and a brain can recognize why that parity is badly needed.

 

I understand people are concerned about their particular builds and their particular characters, but I'm also sure there will be ways you can incorporate and improve on this change with your knowledge and talents.  Getting tactics to buffed tohit rates for fast sniping imposes an endurance, slot, and powers tax on your build - what can you accomplish by moving those things elsewhere?  It may well end up being superior for your IO build.  And it definitely will be superior for the players who do not want to play with IO builds, or just aren't very good at them.  One of the Live team's ideals was not to balance around the end-game, highest tier of potential character builds and to keep the game accessible and fun at all stages.

 

its already been expressed before this isnt a "high end set IO requirement".  also many builds utilize leadership power pool regardless... so often what you are saving here is slots.  as with many RPGs there is definitely a huge enjoyment around planning out your build and seeing it come together as you grow.  so you are disregarding the playerbase that enjoys that aspect with this mindset.

 

if it was just a buff to everyone, i dont think as many people would be upset.  it is a nerf to many blaster /device builds and corrupter /time builds (among others) that likely wont change anything in their builds after the update and get no compensation.  i think there are just better ways to go about this.

[Neogumbercules]

I like the concept but the attempt to balance it by increasing recharges, reducing damage, and reducing the range really kind of kills the idea of the snipes.

 

Like even if the math works out the gameplay feel is worse for a lot of players.

[Pzn]

I'm more concerned with the change giving Dominators 12 second recharge when blasters are having it taken away from them. I'd like more explanation on why this was considered a good idea.

Probably because the damage for dom snipes has been reduced by a huge amount.  I would much rather have the longer recharge if they got to keep the previous base damage.