issue 27 [Beta] Patch Notes for August 21st, 2021

[Booper]

PvP Powers Changes

These changes will not be going live in this patch - they are for testing only. Please provide your feedback if you would or would not like to see these changes go live!

• All travel power speed cap increases from Issue 27, Page 2 now also apply in PvP

• Modified the PvP diminishing return curves for travel speeds for testing purposes

  • SpeedRunning set to 0.45, SpeedFlying set to 0.60, SpeedJumping set to 0.45

• Sorcery > Arcane Bolt / Arcane Power
  • Arcane Power can now trigger in PvP (Known Bug, it still isn't doing this)
  • Damage bonus in PvP is 50% of the base damage rather than 100%
• Fortunata Hypnosis (IO proc): PvP placate effect reduced from 5.336s to 4s
  • This puts it in line with the Presence pool's Pacify, which also does 8s PvE and 4s PvP

• Electrical Affinity:

  • Rejuvenating Circuit: Increased the Main Target heal to do an extra 0.41 scale in PvP only. This makes the main target get the equivalent of a 1.96 scale heal (same as Heal Other from Empathy). The chain heal still works off of the 1.55 scale heal, so no change for the healing of secondary targets.

  • Faraday Cage: Increased the duration of PvP-only effects to 20s (up from 5s). This includes mez protection, mez resistance, kb protection and repel protection. The other effects (PvE and Both) still use 5s. This increase in duration is to allow PvPers to have more time outside of the faraday cage bubble before wearing off.

  • Faraday Cage: Decreased the activation period from 1 second to 0.2 second. The faster rate should allow for the Faraday Cage buffs to apply more quickly/reliably when moving through the Faraday Cage bubble. Note: This does not affect Static build up, that will still use a 5s activation period.

  • Defibrillate: Reduced the Endurance Drain to half.

• Super Reflexes PvP tweaks (All ATs):

  • Lowered the activation period of powers with scaling resistance from 2s to 0.5s (all ATs)

  • Increased PvP Elusivity in Focused Fighting, Focused Senses and Evasion to 30%.
  • Added Toxic Resistance to all scaling resistance powers (all ATs)
  • Bug Fix: Corrected Brute's Evasion elusivity duration. It was set to 0.75s when it was supposed to be 2.25s. This resulted in AoE elusivity dropping out between each 2s tick application.

• EMP Arrow PvP tweaks:

  • Increased the duration of all PvP effects to 20s (up from 0.65s). This will allow players to buff themselves inside the EMP field, then exit for up to 20s of protection. These effects only include the following:
    • Resistance to Mez, Teleport
    • Protection to Mez, Knock, and Repel
• Power Surge and Unstoppable PvP tweaks (All ATs):
  • Removed the HP crash
  • Added Psionic Resistance (2.45 scale). The amount of psionic resistance is 35% of what the T9 typically gives to other damage types.
• Granite Armor PvP tweaks (All ATs):
  • Added Psionic Resistance (1.75 scale). The amount of psionic resistance is 35% of what Granite Armor gives to other damage types.
• Singularity's Gravitation Pull:
  • Set a PvEOnly flag on the pull effect that requires Player targets. This should prevent pulling in PvP, but allow critters who summon a Singularity to still utilize the power on players in PvE.
• Toxic Web Grenade:
  • Set the stacking on the -Recharge effect to kReplace in PvP. This will still stack in PvE.

[Razor Cure]

Are there any plans to tweak T9 crashes in PvE too?

[Alouu]

Will be adding more feedback later but for now:

"All travel power speed cap increases from Issue 27, Page 2 now also apply in PvP"  - This does not seem to be working, neither in zone nor arena.

 

Edit 1:

Testing the duration of the Fortunata Hypnosis proc in the Psychic Blast power Will Domination:

 

The results were as follows:

	Live	Test
Point Blank Range, Assault OFF	7.25 seconds	7.25 seconds
Point Blank Range, Assault ON	5.76 seconds	6.21 seconds
~40 Yards Range, Assault OFF	9.73 seconds	9.71 seconds
~40 Yards Range, Assault ON	8.25 seconds	8.25 seconds

 

Even with Will Domination causing the proc to fire off twice, I would have expected the duration reduction from 5.336s to 4s to have some effect. However on the contrary, the results show that the durations on live and test are largely identical. (Ignoring the ~0.5s variance in the "Point Blank Range, Assault ON" test which I assume is just my human error.)

 

Edit 2:

@Sessa  @Whoogiewatsit and @Emotional Wreck and myself got some 2v2s in on brainstorm and tested out the changes to Gravity Control and Electric Affinity.

 

In regards to Gravity Control our thoughts were that although thanks to Dimension Shift it is still by a long way the best Control set, and is quite likely still necessary to ban in 2v2 tournaments and events for that reason alone, it is at least much less frustrating to play against now thanks to no longer occasionally getting trapped inside singularity's gravitational pull. We consider the singularity change to be a great step in the right direction in regards to making Gravity Control balanced on the whole.

 

In regards to Electric Affinity, we discovered that the nerf to defribrillate was too heavy handed. The intent of the change was to force players who take the power to enhance it for endurance modification in order to get the effect of "1-shotting" a opponent's endurance when at maximum static. A certain value in the power was changed from 30 to 15 in order to attempt to effect that change. However in practise for whatever reason this does not seem to happen, instead it only drains about 75% of the target's endurance under such conditions. I recommend changing the value which was changed, from 15 back up to 20. As 20 is 33% more than 15, this should in theory just about bring the 75% endurance drain up to 100%.

 

Edit 3:
@Madvillain and myself did a whole bunch of fightclub matches to test the new SR.

 

First we tested several characters against a SR brute, all but one of which the SR brute won. Following that we tested a few characters against a SR scrapper all of which SR scrapper won. It seems that the new elusivity value of 30% has too much synergy with additional sources of defence such as unleash potential and demonic aura, this makes the downtime in between Eludes much more manageable for the SR to survive in, which in turn gives it more time to kill the enemy. Our thoughts are that the 30% elusivity value is a slight over-tuning, and that 25% would be better.

 

Edit 4:

Tested Toxic Web Grenade with @Sessa, we can confirm it doesnt stack -recharge as intended.

 

Edit 5:

After some solo testing with Arcane Bolt, I do not think there is any reason to have the power function differently in pvp than it does in pve.

 

To explain why, here is an example of Arcane Bolt "critting" in pvp:

Total: 300.97

 

And here is an example of me using a power from my attack chain:

Total: 432.97

 

And here is an example of me using a power that is not in my attack chain (because it isnt good enough):

Total: 256.81

 

The examples are just for easy demonstration though rather than apples to apples comparisons, because Strangler has 4 procs in, Ice Blast has 1, and Arcane Bolt has 0.

 

But since the proc rate of the powers is known, here is an actual comparison:

	Arcane Bolt Base	Ice Blast	Arcane Bolt +50% Crit	Strangler	Arcane Bolt +100% Crit	Freeze Ray
Damage	181.75	181.57	272.62	204.18	363.49	133.42
3.5 PPM Proc Chance	50.93%	34.30%	50.93%	90.00%	50.93%	64.17%
Average Proc Damage	52.83	21.31	52.83	186.72	52.83	184.37
Total	234.57	202.88	325.44	390.90	416.32	317.79
Total DPA	118.47	109.78	164.37	174.20	210.26	267.50

 

Arcane Bolt: 129% Dmg enhance, 0% Rech enhance, 1 gladiator's javelin proc, 1 explosive strike proc.

Ice Blast: 129% Dmg enhance, 90% Rech enhance, 1 gladiator's javelin proc.

Strangler: 78.13% Dmg enhance, 0% Rech enhance, 1 gladiator's javelin proc, 1 gladiator's net proc. 1 ghost widow's embrace proc, 1 neuronic shutdown proc

Freeze Ray: 78.13% Dmg enhance, 0% Rech enhance, 1 gladiator's javelin proc, 1 unbreakable constraint proc, 1 gladiator's net proc. 1 ghost widow's embrace proc, 1 neuronic shutdown proc

 

Taking the "Total DPA" as the important row here you can see that as it stands now, Arcane Bolt barely edges out Strangler for DPA when it crits. However since it is unreliable to get the crit, it would not be worth putting the 2 procs in it, which would in turn make it do less damage and therefore be not worth using. If the damage was increased to the +100% Crit, then it would stand squarely in between Strangler and Freeze Ray in terms of DPA when critting. This would make it much stronger but again due to the unreliability of the crit it would still most likely not be worth proccing. So in conclusion it is perfectly safe for Arcane Bolt to have the same +100% crit damage it has in pve.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Alouu

[arcane]

9 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

Are there any plans to tweak T9 crashes in PvE too?

It’s been asked by a dev on one of the last patch note threads about it: “are you willing to take the severe diminishing returns from PvP with that?”

 

Tankers with Unstoppable on in PvP are far weaker than Tankers that skip Unstoppable in PvE. Sound good to you? Me neither.

[Glacier Peak]

10 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

Are there any plans to tweak T9 crashes in PvE too?

Wish I could find the discussion, but from what I've read it boils down to PvP having diminishing returns as the main reason why these changes aren't applied or even being looked at in PvE. The PvP crash from T9 armors are significantly more severe than in PvE.

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, arcane said:

It’s been asked by a dev on one of the last patch note threads about it: “are you willing to take the severe diminishing returns from PvP with that?”

 

Tankers with Unstoppable on in PvP are far weaker than Tankers that skip Unstoppable in PvE. Sound good to you? Me neither.

 

I still think that question makes no sense.

Yes, I would be willing to have Unstoppable be severely nerfed in order to have it be a crashless power. I don't know why addressing that requires talking about PvP DR.

[Wavicle]

On 8/21/2021 at 2:09 PM, Booper said:

• Singularity's Gravitation Pull:
  • Set a PvEOnly flag on the pull effect that requires Player targets. This should prevent pulling in PvP, but allow critters who summon a Singularity to still utilize the power on players in PvE.
• Toxic Web Grenade:
  • Set the stacking on the -Recharge effect to kReplace in PvP. This will still stack in PvE.

 

I don't understand what these notes are really saying.

[Bionic_Flea]

Singy won't pull players in PvP.  Toxic Webnade's -recharge won't stack in PvP.  No change in PvE.

[Glacier Peak]

30 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I still think that question makes no sense.

Yes, I would be willing to have Unstoppable be severely nerfed in order to have it be a crashless power. I don't know why addressing that requires talking about PvP DR.

In the context of this discussion on PvP related changes, it makes sense. Unstoppable, Power Surge, and other T9 armor powers don't add significant resistance or defense to a player due to the effects of diminishing returns in PvP. It's actually rather severe, so a player with 120% s/l PvE resistance (capped at 90% for Tankers) for example, would be DR'd down to 60% PvP resistance. Activating the T9 would hardly raise it at all, to say 62% resistance in a PvP zone. Yet, the crash that occurs for those T9s don't get DR'd - so hardly any increase in resistance or defense and then a massive crash. In PvP, at least in organized play, this is essential a suicide button. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Glacier Peak
numbers

[arcane]

33 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

I still think that question makes no sense.

Yes, I would be willing to have Unstoppable be severely nerfed in order to have it be a crashless power. I don't know why addressing that requires talking about PvP DR.

PvP DR is the only reason the no-crash T9’s are balanced IOW. If you like your tanks getting 90% res to anything ever, go no further, you don’t want no part of this.

Edited August 23, 2021 by arcane

[Glacier Peak]

Context - Stone Armor/Stone Melee Tanker, Level 50, built for Psi-resistance on Live and on Beta:

 

[Wavicle]

What I want is for T9s to be useful across the board, but I accept this isn't really the place for that discussion.

[Glacier Peak]

So for a Tanker in Granite Armor in a PvP zone or match, Granite Armor would provide 35% of the 50% damage resistance offered to other typed damage, meaning 17.5% added Psi resistance. Then calculate the added 17.5% Psi resistance on top of the current PvE amount of 60% and it DRs down to 48% in a PvP zone/match.

 

Recommend using this awesome spreadsheet to determine DR far more accurately than I could off hand:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AMeJoSamWAdSWM4ETHhQIc8RHzBTa48KUp4vNg_ixps/edit#gid=1808432374

[Booper]

7 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

I don't understand what these notes are really saying.

 

Powers often have effects or effect groups that are specific to PvE or PvP, yet how that's implemented is inconsistent. Some do a requirement check for isPvPMap?, some have a flag for PvPOnly?, and some check if the target is a Player.

 

In the case of Singularity, it uses a requirement check for if target is a critter and if target is a player. Since Singularity is a pet that can be summoned by either players or critters, that "if target is player" requirement is used for both PvP and EvP. This is why a PvEOnly flag was added to this effect. It will retain the EvP aspect of the power while removing the PvP aspect.

 

Another solution could have been to remove the "if target is player" effect entirely, and removed the "if target is critter" requirement from the other effect. In that situation, the same pull mechanics would be used by both player summoned Singularities and critter summoned Singularities (45 foot radius). A PvEOnly flag could be added to this remaining effect, thus removing the pull from PvP.

[Mezmera]

You think DR hits defense/resist toons hard?  Have a look at what it does to squishies.  There's limited reasons to go outside such diverse builds as hp/procs on high damage/high survivability characters.  

 

DR as a whole in PvP needs a rethink.  Then so does procs (which they are doing), the mez system, blaster and defender values in general, how unkillable we want to make melee.  It's all pretty borked.  There should be something threatening in every AT to their competitor, what fun is it to leap around on a tank with 3500hp with high resists/defense taunt boting?  

 

PvP right now feels like that Tales From The Crypt story of the kids swimming in a lake stuck adrift on the raft with a slime slowly picking off one AT at a time, finally one AT makes it to shore but they taunt the slime a little too well and it beaches itself to get the last one.  

[Bionic_Flea]

Wait . . .  we have a Bopper AND a Booper? 

[GraspingVileTerror]

Given you've been following Booper for a while, Flea, I'm not sure why you're making that post.

[Bionic_Flea]

On 8/24/2021 at 4:13 PM, GraspingVileTerror said:

Given you've been following Booper for a while, Flea, I'm not sure why you're making that post.

 

Because I saw a new post from Booper, but thought it was Bopper, went to read it, saw a different Avatar (booping dog vs AG Gary), thought Bopper had changed avatars, and then my eyes and brain finally synced to realize Booper is a totally different person, a dev person no less!

[Lorraine of Pinnacle]

Any thought to removing all PVE content from PVP zones?  Can use merits to purchase the badges, nukes, heavies.

 

Or making copies of the PVP zones and adding them Ouro as Echo: so that people can acquire items in peace?

Edited August 28, 2021 by Lorraine of Pinnacle

[GraspingVileTerror]

That's probably a good suggestion to make in the Suggestions board, @Lorraine of Pinnacle!

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/45-suggestions-amp-feedback/

[Trojan Horse]

On 8/28/2021 at 1:29 PM, Lorraine of Pinnacle said:

Any thought to removing all PVE content from PVP zones?  Can use merits to purchase the badges, nukes, heavies.

 

Or making copies of the PVP zones and adding them Ouro as Echo: so that people can acquire items in peace?

Nothing to worry about since the pvp zones are mostly dead.  Besides, those items are optional.  Obtain at your own risk

[Jacke]

On 8/26/2021 at 11:55 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

Because I saw a new post from Booper, but thought it was Bopper, went to read it, saw a different Avatar (booping dog vs AG Gary), thought Bopper had changed avatars, and then my eyes and brain finally synced to realize Booper is a totally different person, a dev person no less!

 

Flea, are you saying Bopper has an Evil Twin named Booper ?!?