Focused Feedback: Changes to Sleep and Placate

[Booper]

This is a Focused Feedback Thread

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• The most up-to-date version of the changes will be listed in the first post.
• The changes in each build will be posted as replies.
  • Changes from the previous beta build are listed in green.
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  • Known issues are listed in purple.

 

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Sleep

Player sleep powers are now Auto Hit. This only impacts powers that have a 100% chance for sleep and are not Sleep over Time. This change impacts all player versions of the following powers (unless noted otherwise) :

• Blind (AoE segment, main target still needs a hit check before this can trigger)
• Blinding Powder
• Chilling Ray (Sentinel only power)
• Flash Freeze
• Frozen Aura
• Mass Hypnosis
• Mesmerize
• Salt Crystals
• Siren Song
• Sleep Grenade
• Spore Burst

 

Placate

The Placate targeted power, typically found in Stalker power sets has been changed to meet the following standards:

• Range 60ft (some versions were set at 50ft)
• Cast time 0.8s, down from 1.5s (sometimes 1.67s)
• Instant Hit (down from 0.5s delay upon activation)
• Changed from Single Target into 15ft radius Sphere AoE
• Target Cap increased from 1 to 5

This applies to the following set categories:

• Stalker Melee
• Bane Spider Soldier
• Widow Teamworks

[Itikar]

A small note, for the powers that sleep and do damage, will the damage be reduced or removed given the powers are now auto-hit?

 

This was particularly annoying for the powers that did low damage, such as siren's song, since the incarnate interface bonus damage then broke the sleep.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Itikar

[Arcadio]

Placate changes look amazing, especially for VEATs to get some more mileage out of the crit. Excited to try it out.

 

On 11/2/2021 at 4:12 PM, Booper said:

Sleep

Player sleep powers are now Auto Hit. This only impacts powers that have a 100% chance for sleep and are not Sleep over Time. This change impacts all player versions of the following powers (unless noted otherwise) :

Does this mean the damage from damaging attacks is also auto-hit or just the sleep? Very interesting for proc builds.

[Captain Powerhouse]

Just the sleep. Damage, and any debuff in these sleep powers still require a to-hit check, and all these powers still accept accuracy enhancements for that reason.

[Mezmera]

Although I find it strong to be able to for certain Mass Hypnosis 16 targets I wasn't missing much before and it's not like the few missed couldn't be handled alternatively.  I'm not sure auto hit will make the power any more tempting to take since the targets will likely just be awoken by a fireball a second after anyways.  

 

It would likely make sleeps a bit more impactful to have in your arsenal if it offered some type of drowsy effect where the targets awoken have a -tohitt debuff for a bit.  

[Kai Moon]

On 11/2/2021 at 1:12 PM, Booper said:

Player sleep powers are now Auto Hit.

 

1) The powers still have a hit roll for their non-sleep components, but the Hit Rolls log no longer displays the hit roll or hit chance. It'd be nice if those numbers could be left in the Hit Rolls log.

 

2) Mass Hypnosis and Spore Burst have only one effect, sleep, which will be autohit. Accuracy enhancements will no longer affect them, so should probably be disallowed.

 

3) Salt Crystals (controller and dominator version) has a defense debuff, but debuff enhancement is disallowed because the debuff is too minor. The same reasoning would apply to accuracy enhancement; either debuff and accuracy enhancers should both be allowed, or neither. Probably both, since the blaster version allows both.

 

4) Flash Freeze and Sleep Grenade will have sleep that autohits, but insignificant damage with a to-hit check. This creates a perverse incentive to not slot accuracy, since the powers probably become less useful with more accuracy - the damage prevents sleep stacking. Not sure on a good way to remove that incentive. Maybe make the damage non-breaking for sleep?

5) Poison Gas Arrow and Static Field have 100% chance to sleep components. I feel like the 100% chance to sleep parts should be autohit too.

 

6) The day job power Sleep Gas is 100% chance to sleep. I feel like the rationale for making player sleeps autohit should apply to day job powers too.

 

7) Sleep IO sets become less useful with this change. Powers that accept these sets either deal good damage (so want to use a damage set instead), or get little or no benefit from accuracy (so don't want to waste slots on acc). Tweaking some of the acc parts could help.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Kai Moon
misunderstood PGA and Static!

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

Although I find it strong to be able to for certain Mass Hypnosis 16 targets I wasn't missing much before and it's not like the few missed couldn't be handled alternatively.  I'm not sure auto hit will make the power any more tempting to take since the targets will likely just be awoken by a fireball a second after anyways.  

 

It would likely make sleeps a bit more impactful to have in your arsenal if it offered some type of drowsy effect where the targets awoken have a -tohitt debuff for a bit.  

 

Sleeps are not typically intended to be strong mez. You won't get any argument from me that they should be less terrible, but they are intentionally weaker than, say, a Stun or a Terror.  

 

The biggest benefit here is that you can use Sleeps to shut down enemy toggles like Hurricane despite their massive tohit debuffs.

 

Now if only we could get that mag 100 sleep protection removed from robots...

 

4 minutes ago, Kai Moon said:

5) Poison Gas Arrow and Static Field have 100% chance to sleep components. I feel like the 100% chance to sleep parts should be autohit too.

 

And this is the exception. Static Field is designed from the ground up to compete with Dark's fear cone, Ice Slick, and Flash Fire.  These powers don't need anything else to justify them, so they hit the qualifier of "sleep over time" (see OP).

[Kai Moon]

6 minutes ago, Replacement said:

they hit the qualifier of "sleep over time" (see OP)

Derp, I thought PGA and Static Field had an initial long duration tick of sleep, in addition to the sleep over time. But they don't. Thanks for setting me straight!

[Mezmera]

30 minutes ago, Replacement said:

 

Sleeps are not typically intended to be strong mez. You won't get any argument from me that they should be less terrible, but they are intentionally weaker than, say, a Stun or a Terror.  

 

The biggest benefit here is that you can use Sleeps to shut down enemy toggles like Hurricane despite their massive tohit debuffs.

 

Now if only we could get that mag 100 sleep protection removed from robots...

 

 

And this is the exception. Static Field is designed from the ground up to compete with Dark's fear cone, Ice Slick, and Flash Fire.  These powers don't need anything else to justify them, so they hit the qualifier of "sleep over time" (see OP).

 

But they are a very strong mez.  Of all the controls sleeps are the most instantly impactful and are the easiest to break by clumsy teammates.  

 

Sleeps are a Jekyll & Hyde type of power.   With the current strategic style and game play of teams I see no reason to have a sleep in your bag of tricks if you have plenty other alternatives like Mind Control has. 

 

I have Mass Hypnosis in a 3rd build in preparation to help people get badges for the old school LRSF other than that I see no use for the power no matter how accurate you make it, which is fine there's other powers to take.  Just pointing out this tinkering doesn't make it any more attractive.  

[Unknown Magi]

Will the placate change be applied to Ninja masterminds' Jounin also?

[Captain Powerhouse]

Notice: this was missing from the patch, and only currently applies to Earth Manipulation's version of Salt Crystals: the Auto Hit aspect also does not apply on Raid Targets (most AVs/GMs/etc)

 

Right now its auto-hit on everything, but that will be corrected on a future patch.

 

15 minutes ago, Unknown Magi said:

Will the placate change be applied to Ninja masterminds' Jounin also?

 

No, this only applies to powers players use directly, and only powers they buy (primary/secondary/epic/pool) not temporary powers or pet powers.

[JayboH]

Only toyed with the new placate awhile back on Cryptic but it seemed to work well.

[Peacemoon]

The sleep change is interesting but speaking for Mind Control, mesmerise has a 1.2 accuracy mod and mass hypnosis 1.0 (higher than most AoE control) so accuracy was never much of an issue with these powers.
 

So the change will help players at low level before enhancements, by making sleeps more reliable, but a minimal change for everyone else. 
 

[aethereal]

I'd be interested in hearing the philosophy behind this particular sleep change?  Like, obviously everyone agreed that sleep needed some bonus, but why auto-hit?

 

My guess at authorial intent is to make sleep powers functional with no slot commitments, so that you can pick one up, put an recharge, sleep length, or end redx in its default slot (or maybe the chance to placate proc), then ignore it.  Is that the case?

 

Auto-hit seems like a weird bonus to me, in as much as we generally expect players to be running with near-capped to-hit rolls already -- does it make a difference whether your sleep is 95% likely to hit vs 100% likely?  (I mean, I guess it does if you don't put any slots on the power).

 

Most (all?) sleep enhancement sets offer accuracy bonuses in them, that seems...  somewhat at tension with this change.

 

I don't know, it feels awkward and like it's not really what sleeps in general need, though perhaps there are a few sleep powers that this will really work for?

[Arcadio]

12 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

No, this only applies to powers players use directly, and only powers they buy (primary/secondary/epic/pool) not temporary powers or pet powers.

This change currently doesn't apply to pacify in the presence pool. Should it?

[Greycat]

I'm... not sure how I feel about sleeps being autohit.

 

I mean, I like sleeps. I'm an advocate for them. Team having a hard time, low level, vs COT? (posi 1/2 come to mind for this, since ruin mage bubbles and -tohit fields are absolute b**ches when stacked.) Sleeps are wonderful. Want to make sure you're only going to pull one of the phalanx/patrons in LRSF/MLTF? SLeeping the others does that. Tsoo sorc hurricane and healing causing problems? Sleep (then confuse for the buff.) They cut through defenses and shut down armors - even if they're "woken up" right away, those powers aren't immediately available again.

 

Having these autohit at lower to mid level is going to be insanely useful.  Which is part of why I'm not sure how I feel about it. :) 

 

I mean, the fact the DMG (or other effect) needs an acc check in powers that have that (like mesmerize) are probably a good balancing point..

 

Regardless, I'll definitely have a mind (or plant with spore burst) around for lower to mid level TFs because of this.

 

17 hours ago, Mezmera said:

It would likely make sleeps a bit more impactful to have in your arsenal if it offered some type of drowsy effect where the targets awoken have a -tohitt debuff for a bit.  

 

This might be worth looking into. Not sure if -tohit is what to use, but a minor "woken" debuff of some sort for a few seconds might be more enticing to players who just see "but they wake right away!" in sleeps.

 

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

Auto-hit seems like a weird bonus to me, in as much as we generally expect players to be running with near-capped to-hit rolls already

 

We do? Who does? And are you expecting that from level 1 on up? This doesn't seem like a fair or realistic general assumption to make. Maybe in a min/max subset of the playerbase that only runs at 50 and builds for that, sure, and that certainly exists, but that's not everyone. I wouldn't even think it'd be half.

[aethereal]

12 minutes ago, Greycat said:

We do? Who does? And are you expecting that from level 1 on up? This doesn't seem like a fair or realistic general assumption to make. Maybe in a min/max subset of the playerbase that only runs at 50 and builds for that, sure, and that certainly exists, but that's not everyone. I wouldn't even think it'd be half.

I absolutely do, and "slotting enough accuracy that you're at near-cap" has been standard advice from the moment the game launched.  At low levels, you get a to-hit bonus anyway and it's easy to pick up DFB bonuses to carry you until you have slot space to put in accuracy.

[Greycat]

1 minute ago, aethereal said:

I absolutely do, and "slotting enough accuracy that you're at near-cap" has been standard advice from the moment the game launched.  At low levels, you get a to-hit bonus anyway and it's easy to pick up DFB bonuses to carry you until you have slot space to put in accuracy.

 

... assuming you want to run DFB repeatedly on every single character versus jumping into story arcs.

 

Not an assumption that should be made.

[aethereal]

Just now, Greycat said:

 

... assuming you want to run DFB repeatedly on every single character versus jumping into story arcs.

 

Not an assumption that should be made.

 

You don't need to run it "repeatedly," just once.

 

I'm sure that you can find someone who's rocking a 50% chance to hit and plugs his ears and says, "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME" when people tell him to slot accuracy.  But expecting people to make it so their powers basically hit some of the time is what we should balance around.  This is not, at all, the same as assuming that everyone will be soft-capped or that all squishies will be immune to mez through T4 Clarion, or that tanks will be able to AFK in the middle of a +4/x8 spawn and not have their health bar budge.

[tidge]

I appreciate the proposed updates to Placate (and Pacify). My hot takes (without testing)

• The ability to slot "threat duration" sidesteps the current blunt criticism "why take a power I cannot slot?"
• The increased number of affected enemies (in PVE) via target cap and AoE will increase the utility of the power. I have used Placate on a variety of solo characters that don't have much (if any AoE), and it would have been much more useful in certain arcs to be able to placate multiple enemies.
• The DSO (Threat/Accuracy/recharge) will be a nice option for folks that don't invest (m)any slots in Taunt (or now Placate)

Question(s):

 

Is the Presence pool version (Pacify) going to at least get the AoE effect? I wouldn't want it to be auto-hit, but it shouldn't flat-out stink. I would prefer Pacify to get the same AoE and target cap, similar to how the Presence Pool's Provoke is not auto-hit, but has a larger cap than the auto-hit single-target Challenge powers.

 

I'd also like Pacify to be able to trigger critical chances (only for the AT that have an primary/secondary Placate power)... that Presence pool power needs some attention to make it not stink.

[Captain Powerhouse]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

I'd be interested in hearing the philosophy behind this particular sleep change?  Like, obviously everyone agreed that sleep needed some bonus, but why auto-hit?

 

This is step one in what likely will be a long set of changes that will take a while to implement. The idea being that Sleep will be a reliable way to shut-down enemy buff and debuffs. Someone already mentioned Hurricane as an example. Another example is CoT Chill of the Night toggles that drastically debuff accuracy. Right now, sleep will reliably turn those toggles off.

 

Eventually some NPC buffs like Nemesis Vengeance will also be purgeable via applying a sleep on buffed entities.

 

Most cases where this would be useful, either the player accuracy is heavily debuffed, or enemy defense drastically buffed.

 

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, Arcadio said:

This change currently doesn't apply to pacify in the presence pool. Should it?

 

Pacify is a Placate power. The comment you replied to was specific to Sleeps.

 

15 minutes ago, tidge said:

Is the Presence pool version (Pacify) going to at least get the AoE effect? I

 

No.

[Kai Moon]

Are there plans to update the power descriptions?

 

An in-game explanation should help future players reconcile the parts of the game suggesting these powers have a to-hit check (e.g. acc slotting, no damage on "autohit") with the parts of the game suggesting these powers are autohit (e.g. Hit Rolls log, sleep hits but no damage).

[Glacier Peak]

3 minutes ago, Kai Moon said:

Are there plans to update the power descriptions?

 

An in-game explanation should help future players reconcile the parts of the game suggesting these powers have a to-hit check (e.g. acc slotting, no damage on "autohit") with the parts of the game suggesting these powers are autohit (e.g. Hit Rolls log, sleep hits but no damage).

What description(s) would you recommend? What text do you think would help inform the player the most?

[tidge]

 

2 hours ago, tidge said:

Is the Presence pool version (Pacify) going to at least get the AoE effect?

 

2 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

No.

 

That's a stinker.