Mercenaries set animation time bug

[WumpusRat]

Kind of reposting this from the suggestion forum, since it seems to be an actual bug.

 

The Mercenaries Mastermind set seems to be bugged in terms of the animation time needed to use the Soldiers, Spec-Ops, Commando, and Tactical Upgrade skills. 

 

The summons are supposed to be 2.03 seconds, but take 4.5 (approximately) to cast, with the MM being locked into the animation for the entire time. If they're trying to summon all three sets of pets quickly, it takes almost 14 seconds, rather than 6. 

 

Similarly, Tactical Upgrade is also supposed to have a 2.03 second animation, but takes 4.5 seconds as well, as it uses the exact same animation for summoning the pets.

 

All the other sets follow the listed cast time for the powers, except for Mercenaries. Hopefully this can be fixed, because it definitely puts a much heavier load on Merc MMs when they're trying to replace and upgrade pets mid-fight. 4.5s for the summon, another 6 seconds for the two upgrades, and then another couple of seconds to re-buff them if you have something like /Thermal, /FF, /Cold, etc. 12-15 seconds spent locked in place to get a single replacement pet back into the fight.

[WumpusRat]

If some other people could test this, it would be really appreciated.

 

One of the devs did and didn't see the same delay I'm seeing. If I could get some corroboration (one way or another) it would help try and track down what's causing it.

 

Be sure to turn timestamps on with seconds, and queue up mercenary summons one after the other, to see how long it takes for the powers to fire off.

 

According to the way the game works, and how the dev verified for his testing, it should be 2 seconds. On my end it's 4 seconds, even by timestamps, so it's not lag or anything like that (as it's also consistent, 100% of the time).

[WumpusRat]

Okay, I figured out where the bug is.

 

Basically, the only time the Mercenary summon/buff animations activate at their listed activation time of 2.03 seconds is if you queue up one of your Mercenary rifle attacks. THEN it activates in 2 seconds, allowing you to fire off your attack.

 

ANY other power doesn't cut the animation short, making you have to go through the full 4 second animation.

 

Tested with aid other, temporal mending, farsight, dispersion field, and aid self (which has an additional bug of it simply not firing off at all, and dropping out of the queue).

 

But doing a summon + burst? 2 second animation for the summon, as it's listed for the power. THAT works, but everything else makes the animation take double the time.

 

<edit> A little further testing. ANY weapon-draw animation will kick you out of the summon/tactical upgrade animation, and end it at 2 seconds the way it should. Tested it with a couple of random temp powers (baseball bat and revolver), and the same thing happened. Since all three summons and tactical upgrade use the same animation, there's probably something glitched in that, and it's playing the "talk on the radio" part of it (the 2-second loop) twice. But for some reason triggering a weapon draw interrupts it before it starts the second loop of the animation. But no other power does.

Edited November 13, 2022 by WumpusRat

[Wavicle]

YES! I noticed this way back when the summon times were "normalized" and thought I was losing my mind.

[CaptainLupis]

Yeah, this is especially noticeable when teaming with other MMs and they have fully summoned and buffed their henchies before you even have your 3rd set out. It definitely needs looked at.