Focused Feedback: VEAT Updates

[FupDup]

3 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

Well, that and having no heal, no endurance clickies, and being a mixed bag of melee and range. The lack of endurance tools in particular has always ended pushing me away. At least they have a CC toggle.

The inherent Conditioning really ought to be buffed. At bare minimum I'd like it to be slottable so we could stick an extra Shifter proc or something in there. 

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, balor said:

I have a question about a power that was not listed in the changes. 

 

But first, these are great in general—new Widow powers to deal with some of the issues of the power set is great. Improving the crit damage is huge, as I love my melee Widow, but I'm also learning to love it on my Huntsman. The cast time changes and other rebalances are welcome. You even addressed two big stinkers: Omega Maneuver and Confront.

Now, I'm not sure if it's because Pain Tolerance was added or the fact that there is a power that I have never seen anyone take in their builds. The community no longer complains about the power because they don't think it even exists; possibly, it is an urban legend. Why was Elude not updated, reworked, or made into anything besides that power that is never taken? I would take a smoke grenade over Elude, and at least I get a cool poof of smoke from it. Dev crew, please do something with Elude. Even if it is a big change or a different direction altogether, please make the final power out of Widow Teamwork worth considering vs something that is almost never taken.

99% of this is awesome and well done, but please take a moment to really have a hard look at Elude as a viable option versus being listed as an auto-pass power.

In the end, if nothing is done with Elude, well, it would not change much as we don't take it now, but everything else will be getting better in this update.

Now that I've complained, here are some very fast off-the-cuff options as a direction to consider. Keeping in the theme, this is a "Ruh-roh!" moment type of power.

• A passive or more balanced defensive buff – but we've got Pain Tolerance now, yahoo!
• Advanced Widow poisons – a two-part power. First, a passive bonus to all poison damage Damage Over Time (DOTs) (not the number of ticks but damage per tick). Second, on activation, for the next X number of seconds, all poison DOTs impose heavy debuffs in the form of -Accuracy, -ToHit, -Damage, maybe even a chance on tick for a 2-second hold in the form of the vomiting animation. 
• Lastly maybe a simple single-target debuff skill to avoid damage -Accuracy, -ToHit, -Damage, as simple examples.

Readers will likely think of something better right away, or even the dev team, but in the end, it would be nice to have this as a competitive choice. I believe you all could come up with something fitting to address Elude or that power slot.

 

Elude is in a fantastic place!

 

Elude has insane defense buffs, getting me in the 150% positional def range easily. Granted, outside of select instances, there's no need for anything that high, (basically playing with the 5% chance to hit from enemies before I hit Elude anyways on my build), but it also grants helpful endurance recovery too and lasts an insane 3 whole minutes! I'd describe the power as over kill, but I also see it as another tool in my toolkit when soloing 'Master of' content where temps and Incarnates are disabled. Having Elude available gives me the option to hit a T9 after reviving, which has helped me if I go down right before defeating an AV/Hero. Nothing worse than beating down a health bar for 10 minutes and then right before you land the final blow, their 5% chance to hit kicks in and their attack takes down your entire health bar before either scaling resist bonuses or absorb proc kick in. So revive, Elude, and no need to retoggle anything! 

[Shin Magmus]

Please, please, please do not roll back or take away the new powers from Night Widow and Fortunata.  My only current complaint is that Fate Sealed should give either some +Max HP as well or some Damage Resistances: so that it can be slotted with useful core Unique IOs the same way as the Night Widow power.  I like Fortunatas, but they desperately needed more HP just as much as Night Widows.

 

I like the "idea" of Fate Sealed but it does very little for your build and giving it some +Max HP or +Regen is the easiest way to let people slot something of value into it.  On that note: I already planned out my Respec for my Night Widow build. 

[KaizenSoze]

9 hours ago, FupDup said:

The inherent Conditioning really ought to be buffed. At bare minimum I'd like it to be slottable so we could stick an extra Shifter proc or something in there. 

As someone who has complained a lot about the inherit. An requested everything you are asking for.

 

It's not really an issue now. Leveling Widows is painful and it would be nice to have more endurance, but you can use SG end buff powers to work around that.

 

But due to the damage increase for Night Widows specially, mobs die quickly enough that's it's an manageable issue now. Though I do not proc out my builds, proc'ed builds have more end issues.

SoA never really had serious end issues in my experience, due to the low number of toggles.

The inherit is just a placeholder for the historical reason that all ATs must have an inherit. At least that is what I have learned while complaining about it.

Edited January 22 by KaizenSoze

[Videra]

After fussing around with Night Widow and Fort, I really like the changes that have been made! But some stuff really jumps out at me as having either not been considered, or intentionally left at the wayside. I'll bullet note them:
 

• 1: Dart Burst has always been a fairly sad move in terms of overall damage. It has a minute regen debuff, and now that psychic scream is getting touched up, I really do think it would be nice to keep a degree of parity between the two AOE cones available to Night Widow by also buffing Dart Burst. Either in strengthening its secondary effect or tweaking its damage numbers upwards.
• 2: Spin. It's simple enough to say that Night Widow has the worst version of spin - it doesn't have the inflated damage numbers that it would on a tanker, scrapper or brute. Either those versions of Spin should be brought into parity with NW's spin, or the inverse. I'd prefer the buff, naturally.
• 3: Psychic Tornado. Echoing a few people earlier in this thread, just buff the darn thing already. You could literally just improve its damage a decent amount we'd be happy with it, probably.

[Shin Magmus]

I agree about the Dart Burst and Spin changes, while Psynado should obviously just be buffed to have parity with the reworked Psy Blast (I'm genuinely confused that Fort Psy attacks didn't get reworks as soon at Psy Blast did). 

 

For real though: let Forts/Widows have the same monstrous, powerful, set-defining Spin that all other Claws characters get.  It's long past due and I don't think the AT will suddenly be "too good" just because it's brought into line with the other Claw characters who will still deal more damage because of superior Inherents, or in the Tanker's case superior radius and target caps.  We're allowed to let the Night Widow be high tier, but not the top tier.

[ecogranjapsi]

On 11/22/2023 at 5:45 PM, The Curator said:

"Hidden" Changes:

• Mask Presence and Cloaking Device can now stack with other stealth toggles (similar to Hide for Stalkers).
  • Bane and Night Widow's stealth radius is now 55' in PvE and 500' in PvP (no change for Fortunatas)

 

 

May I ask why let Forts out of this change? Is it because Bane and NW interact with the hidden state via crits?

 

I thought that the stealth radius was not related to the "hidden" status, that's why we have the "hidden" text appear below the buffs bar. Similar to how hidden works for Stalkers (even if they have like a 150ft stealth radius).

[KaizenSoze]

1 minute ago, ShinMagmus said:

I agree about the Dart Burst and Spin changes, while Psynado should obviously just be buffed to have parity with the reworked Psy Blast (I'm genuinely confused that Fort Psy attacks didn't get reworks as soon at Psy Blast did). 

 

For real though: let Forts/Widows have the same monstrous, powerful, set-defining Spin that all other Claws characters get.  It's long past due and I don't think the AT will suddenly be "too good" just because it's brought into line with the other Claw characters who will still deal more damage because of superior Inherents, or in the Tanker's case superior radius and target caps.  We're allowed to let the Night Widow be high tier, but not the top tier.

Be careful what you ask for with Psi nado. Any increase in damage might come with a decrease in another aspect like radius.

 

One of the uncommon things about Widow Psi nado is that has a 20 radius, only Sentinels get the same radius. Everyone else is stuck with 15, which is 28% smaller.

Would I like the the travel speed to be increased, that would be nice. As long as they don't nerf the radius.

As for Spin, the damage is ok, but it's an end hog for the damage compared to the other versions. As least with the improved placate you can get more crits out of it.

[balor]

4 hours ago, Videra said:

 

• 2: Spin. It's simple enough to say that Night Widow has the worst version of spin - it doesn't have the inflated damage numbers that it would on a tanker, scrapper or brute. Either those versions of Spin should be brought into parity with NW's spin, or the inverse. I'd prefer the buff, naturally.

Having the widows Spins End Cost at the same rate as the Brute/Tanker of 13.15 would be a big improvement over the stock 15.44 but still way above the scrapper 9.15. 

 

5 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

As someone who has complained a lot about the inherit. An requested everything you are asking for.

 

It's not really an issue now. Leveling Widows is painful and it would be nice to have more endurance, but you can use SG end buff powers to work around that.

 

But due to the damage increase for Night Widows specially, mobs die quickly enough that's it's an manageable issue now. Though I do not proc out my builds, proc'ed builds have more end issues.

SoA never really had serious end issues in my experience, due to the low number of toggles.

The inherit is just a placeholder for the historical reason that all ATs must have an inherit. At least that is what I have learned while complaining about it.

Endurance/recovery issues is basically how I have seen some describe the Arachnos archetypes.  With inherent powers being the core facet of the super power archetypes it did feel like someone was a bit at their creative limits when they made Conditioning.  It might be fun to get a chance to test out what the archetypes would feel like at 25% regen and 7.5% or 10% recovery. Even possibly more if you take this to the conclusion of mini Arachnos super soldiers.  Add in a small run speed and jump buff.  But you look at something like Regeneration with Quick Recovery that is 30% and able to be slotted makes the 5% static value seem light.  Yes inherent vs power sets but game design is not easy and if you disagree ask someone that has done it for a living. 

Edited January 22 by balor

[Shin Magmus]

Just to be clear, a lot of people still don't understand the mechanics of the SoA/Widow Inherent.  It's not a flat value and it never has been.  Conditioning multiplies the value of any and all sources of Regen and Recovery in your build because it is a constant invisible increase to your Base Regen and Base Recovery.  I think the value is 20% for Regen and 10% for Recovery.

 

Go on test server, open your Combat Attributes and load up any basic AT with standard exactly 100 Endurance then slot Numinas unique and Miracle unique in Health.  Test this across various ATs: all of them will show the same numerical value in Combat Attributes specifically, showing +whatever.  Now do this on a SoA and it will be a different, higher value.  Conditioning multiplies the effect of the slotting you're doing in your build to fix sustain... but it doesn't give you sustain for free at level 1.

[balor]

24 minutes ago, ShinMagmus said:

Just to be clear, a lot of people still don't understand the mechanics of the SoA/Widow Inherent.  It's not a flat value and it never has been.  Conditioning multiplies the value of any and all sources of Regen and Recovery in your build because it is a constant invisible increase to your Base Regen and Base Recovery.  I think the value is 20% for Regen and 10% for Recovery.

 

I'm assuming that was a typo, it is 5% recovery.

------

I also got a chance to try Pain Tolerance. Neat power 5% resist to everything but Psi.  Also +160.63 HP of my total 1765 hp on my character at 50.  It will take healing or resist enhancements.  Maybe one or two slot it to take key enhancements.  Cool, little power that seems worth taking if you have an extra power slot.  It could also be skipped if you needed a different option.  I love the fact that it is a choice good enough to take but could be skipped and not feel bad about it.

[KaizenSoze]

20 minutes ago, balor said:

I'm assuming that was a typo, it is 5% recovery.

------

I also got a chance to try Pain Tolerance. Neat power 5% resist to everything but Psi.  Also +160.63 HP of my total 1765 hp on my character at 50.  It will take healing or resist enhancements.  Maybe one or two slot it to take key enhancements.  Cool, little power that seems worth taking if you have an extra power slot.  It could also be skipped if you needed a different option.  I love the fact that it is a choice good enough to take but could be skipped and not feel bad about it.

I am currently placing four Preventative Medicine, one of which is the absorb proc. You get a little s/l/f resists at four pieces. Getting over 1800 HP now.

I don't slot resist pieces, because the benefit isn't that great. The base is good enough and my build is tight for slots.

[Sovera]

I'm not actually sure what does the Fortunate passive even do. I'm not sure why we don't have numbers posted with patch notes and instead have to log in, check for ourselves, then come back and post them

 

So what Fate Sealed does is add 33% strength to CC (and since we don't usually slot for CC it's a free 33% untouched by ED) and 15%-34% resistance to CC (scales from level 1 to 50).

 

 

Looking at the damage Scramble Thoughts can be worked into the ST rotation now between damage boost and animation trimming, which is nice. I hit a pylon in the RWZ for numbers and got this:

 

Scramble Thoughts: 46 over 4 seconds.

Subdue: 45.

Dominate: 36.

TK Blast: 21.

 

TK Blast is the least damaging but that FF proc in there can help speed the build, otherwise Subdue is 'only' an immobilize where Scramble is a stun, Dominate is a Hold and TK Blast is a KB, with KD tax, but, FF.

 

We are no longer forced to take Combat Training Defensive since either Pain Tolerance or Fate Sealed replace it.

[balor]

44 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

I am currently placing four Preventative Medicine, one of which is the absorb proc. You get a little s/l/f resists at four pieces. Getting over 1800 HP now.

I don't slot resist pieces, because the benefit isn't that great. The base is good enough and my build is tight for slots.

Great feedback and good call with the preventative meds. I tried it with a full set of Unbreakable Guard and it only boosted it to 7.88%

 

Impressive that takes it from 160.63 to a 302.11 for me. Much better than going the resist path.  It is an interesting trade of an extra 141.48 hp for three slots.  I still find the choice very grey and that is a good thing.

Edited January 22 by balor

[Crimsanotic]

I suppose now is the best time to ask. Can soldiers in general get some knockback protection and defense debuff resistance? Even basic blood widows get knockback and repel protection but soldiers are relegated to either acrobatics or knockback protection set bonuses or globals. And while widows don't get a lot of defense debuff resistance, getting some is certainly better than none, especially for banes.

[LastHumanSoldier]

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

I'm not actually sure what does the Fortunate passive even do. I'm not sure why we don't have numbers posted with patch notes and instead have to log in, check for ourselves, then come back and post them

 

So what Fate Sealed does is add 33% strength to CC (and since we don't usually slot for CC it's a free 33% untouched by ED) and 15%-34% resistance to CC (scales from level 1 to 50).

 

 

Looking at the damage Scramble Thoughts can be worked into the ST rotation now between damage boost and animation trimming, which is nice. I hit a pylon in the RWZ for numbers and got this:

 

Scramble Thoughts: 46 over 4 seconds.

Subdue: 45.

Dominate: 36.

TK Blast: 21.

 

TK Blast is the least damaging but that FF proc in there can help speed the build, otherwise Subdue is 'only' an immobilize where Scramble is a stun, Dominate is a Hold and TK Blast is a KB, with KD tax, but, FF.

 

We are no longer forced to take Combat Training Defensive since either Pain Tolerance or Fate Sealed replace it.

 

I agree the change makes Scramble Thoughts an actual contender for an attack chain.

 

1.67 -- Mental Blast -- 56ish DPA

1.00 -- TK Blast -- 58 DPA

1.67 -- Subdue -- 56ish DPA

1.10 -- Dominate -- 70ish DPA + Massive Proc Potential

2.00 --Scramble Thoughts -- 50ish DPA (If you get all the ticks) + 4 mag stun

 

 

 

 

 

[Troo]

On 11/22/2023 at 8:45 AM, The Curator said:

Arachnos Soldier / Arachnos Widow Updates & Power Customization

• Arachnos Soldiers and Arachnos Widows are now able to customize the colors of their powers in the Power Customization menu.

 

New Widow Powers:

•   Pain Tolerance  Auto: Self Res(All DMG but Psi), +MaxHealth

  • Available to Night Widows at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Night Widows who possess Pain Tolerance are resistant to most damage types, and gain additional hit points. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

•   Fate Sealed  Auto: Self +Mezz, +Res(Mezz)

  • Available to Fortunatas at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Fortunatas who possess Fate Sealed gain resistance to all control effects and empowers their own control attacks. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

 

"Hidden" Changes:

• Mask Presence and Cloaking Device can now stack with other stealth toggles (similar to Hide for Stalkers).
  • Bane and Night Widow's stealth radius is now 55' in PvE and 500' in PvP (no change for Fortunatas)
• Critical Damage from Hidden for Bane attacks now do 100% scale damage (previously 67%).
• Critical Damage from Hidden for Night Widow branch attacks now do 100% scale damage (previously 67%). This affects Slash and Eviscerate, only
• Placate's cooldown reduced to 35s

 

I kept reading waiting for the bad news..

Approved!

[OathboundOne]

On 1/21/2024 at 9:06 PM, Sovera said:

 

Well, that and having no heal, no endurance clickies, and being a mixed bag of melee and range. The lack of endurance tools in particular has always ended pushing me away. At least they have a CC toggle.

Honestly the only thing I've ever wanted for my Fortunata was some sort of endurance management power. Be it a passive recovery power, end discount clicky, or access to Drain Psyche. Just *anything* in the archetype to help manage the blue bar.

[Koopak]

Just to give some deets for people since I did some upper end testing. The placate and crit changes allow NW to claim a solid 10% dps gain. Given a good build could average 500 dps before that's a solid 550.

 

Forts trended a little lower before and this helps set NW apart more damage wise.

 

Once patch hits live I'll be reoptimozing my builds

[Psi-bolt]

Spent some time on a NW yesterday.  Very noticeable increase in damage from the crit changes.  Love the new power and the stealth changes.  Saves the need for the +stealth IO while allowing the stalker-lite playstyle.   Very good changes overall.  Would also love to have a real inherent power for the AT, but I can't honestly claim that's necessary.

[balor]

Hello! A little insight, please? It would be great if one of the team members working on this or some of the people who helped provide feedback to generate these changes could please take a few minutes and talk with us here. What are the goals and objectives with the Arachnos archetypes? Let's get an overview of what issues you all have defined and what can be addressed at this point. Also, feel free to note anything that is outside the scope at this time, so we don't waste time on that topic. Unlike when Tankers were addressed, this part of the community is small, and you might need a call to arms to ask people who play these classes to join in the topic once it is better defined.

 

 

Below I added to the notes on things that should not have been left out as you need to jump into the beta to either check or know off hand.  

 

Arachnos Soldier / Arachnos Widow Updates & Power Customization

• Arachnos Soldiers and Arachnos Widows are now able to customize the colors of their powers in the Power Customization menu.

 

New Widow Powers:

•   Pain Tolerance  Auto: Self Res(All DMG but Psi), +MaxHealth  - Res is 5% and Hp is 160.63 at lvl 50 maybe 15%??? Not listed sadly even in description.

  • Available to Night Widows at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Night Widows who possess Pain Tolerance are resistant to most damage types, and gain additional hit points. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

•   Fate Sealed  Auto: Self +Mezz, +Res(Mezz) - +Mezz is 33% and +Res(Mess) is 15% (34.6% at 50)

  • Available to Fortunatas at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Fortunatas who possess Fate Sealed gain resistance to all control effects and empowers their own control attacks. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

 

"Hidden" Changes:

• Mask Presence and Cloaking Device can now stack with other stealth toggles (similar to Hide for Stalkers).
  • Bane and Night Widow's stealth radius is now 55' in PvE and 500' in PvP (no change for Fortunatas)
• Critical Damage from Hidden for Bane attacks now do 100% scale damage (previously 67%).
• Critical Damage from Hidden for Night Widow branch attacks now do 100% scale damage (previously 67%). This affects Slash and Eviscerate, only
• Placate's cooldown reduced to 35s - was 60 seconds so a 25s reduction

 

Alternate Animations Feature:

• Several powers from the base Arachnos Soldier kit now have alternate animations available in the power customization menu, to visually utilize the Bane Nullifier Mace, or Crab Spider backpack, IF the player has spec'd into the appropriate tree. For example, if a Bane spider chooses the Bane animation for Wide Area Web Grenade, it will use their mace weapon for the attack. However, if a Bane spider chooses the Crab animation for Wide Area Web Grenade, it will instead default to using the rifle animation. This feature has been extended to the following powers:
  • Burst - Now has Crab Longfang alt animation.
  • Wide Area Web Grenade - Now has Bane Grenade and Crab Grenade alt animations.
  • Heavy Burst - Now has Crab Longfang alt animation.
  • Venom Grenade - Now has Bane Grenade and Crab Grenade alt animations (still mutually exclusive to Crab Spider's Venom Grenade).
  • Frag Grenade - Now has Crab Grenade alt animation (still mutually exclusive to Crab Spider's Frag Grenade).

 

Animation Changes:

• All Mace attack's cast times reduced to 1.67s. - cast time was 2s so 0.33s reduction impacting Mace ranged attacks only
• Pummel's cast time reduced to 1.17s. - was 1.67s a 0.5s reduction
• Channelgun's cast time reduced to 1s -was 1.33s a 0.33 reduction
• Longfang's cast time reduced to 1.33s -was 2s a 0.67s reduction 
• Psychic Scream's cast time reduced to 2s. -was 2.67s a 0.67 reduction
• Scramble Thought's cast time reduced to 2s. -was 3s so a full 1 second reduction
• Mind Link's cast time reduced to 2.97s. -was 3.67s a 0.7s reduction 
• Frenzy's cast time reduced to 2.23s. -was 2.5s a 0.27s reduction
• Heavy Burst's cast time reduced to 2.5s. -was 2.67s a 0.17s reduction
• PvP Damage adjusted to reflect these cast time changes.

 

Other VEAT Changes: 

• Mace Beam's cooldown increased to 6s and damage increased to 1.32 scale. -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Mace Beam Blast's cooldown increased to 10s and damage increased to 0.784 scale. Now has 100% chance for knockback. -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Mace Beam Volley's cooldown increased to 10s and damage increased to 0.824 scale. -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Summon Spiderlings and Call Reinforcements now set to Replace stack type, instead of Ignore (summoning while pets are still alive will now destroy the current pets and replace with new ones).
• Channelgun's cooldown increased to 5s and damage increased to 1.16 scale. -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Slice's cooldown increased to 6s and damage increased to 1.32 scale. -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Longfang's cooldown increased to 10s and damage increased to 1.96 scale -End cost also goes up to, in scale I think
• Suppression's defense debuff increased to 10s duration.
• Arm Lash's defense debuff increased to 10s duration.
• Frenzy's defense debuff increased to 10s duration. Radius increased to 10' and damage reduced to 1.424 scale, per design formula.
• Omega Maneuver
  • Cooldown reduced to 240s. -was 360s a 120s reduction
  • Explosion and Taunt subpowers now both have 20' radius and can hit 16 max targets.
  • Stun duration from explosion increased by 25%.
  • Taunt effect now properly enhances (Bug Fix).
  • Taunt effect now works in PvP.
• Confront now applies a -75% Range debuff on target for 12s.
• Mental Blast's cooldown increased to 6s, damage and endurance cost increased accordingly
• Scramble Thought's damage is now a growing DoT. It will do 5 ticks for a total of 1.75 scale damage, with the tick's damage sequence set to 0.25, 0.30, 0.35, 0.40, 0.45. Also, this power now does PvP damage.
• Total Domination's hold duration increased by 50%.
• Psychic Wail now has a 1.4x accuracy modifier.
• Night Widow's Psychic Scream
  • Cooldown increased to 20s. -along with End
  • Debuff duration doubled to 20s.
  • Max targets increased to 12.
  • Arc widened to 45 degrees, range reduced to 50' and damage increased to 1.4931 scale.
• Fixed PvP effects in Soldier armors that had their duration set too low (Bug Fix).

My thoughts and questions

 

New Widow Powers:

Are you powers welcome.- YES!

Do new powers always solve the current issues.- NO! But they can open opportunities for new game play option. 

What is a fundamental issue with adding any new power besides balance? What are you giving up to take that power and does it have a roll over what you already have.

 

 

Pain Tolerance - This is basically a weaker version than the Bane Spider Armor Upgrade with the ability to slot healing, providing a 5% Resistance and about a 15% HP boost. Def vs. HP is really the call here. Widow is a Defense tank and not worth slotting Resistance into it at 5%, compared to spending slots for Tough if you wanted more Resistance. Now, as KaizenSoze pointed out, there are options for getting more HP with enhancements, but you are then burning slots. A very grey choice here, as it is not a good Resistance skill, but an interesting way to get some extra health.

 

If the goal is to create an optional play style for the Night Widow as a VEAT tank, considering Confront also received a good buff, there is room for creativity here. The set also has that polarizing power, Elude 🤮. Sorry, Glacier Peak, I know you love it, even if we don't see eye to eye, we can still be friends. There is clear evidence that NC Soft wanted an option for a Night Widow tank among their Frankenstein Monster rush jobs called VEATs

 

What if you boosted the Resistance value to a reasonable percentage that could really take good advantage of resistant sets and it adds a small taunt/aggro buff to all attacks? Now, there are interesting powers like Cross Punch that get stronger for having particular powers. What if we did something similar here? The taunt/aggro buff goes up by X value when you also have Confront and then goes up again if you take the power Elude 🤢. So, if you take Pain Tolerance, Elude 🤮, and Confront, you are somewhat of a Widow Tank with enough Resistance before dipping into Tough. However, you also took two powers that are not commonly chosen to fulfill a role.

 

On the flip side, someone who does not want to tank just got Pain Tolerance at a good and fair Resistance level, but with the trade-off that they now have a slightly stronger chance to pull aggro in group settings.

 

Fate Sealed- Neat, I will let people that now more about that give feedback.

 

I would have loved to have seen more powers added to provide a variety of options and expand on the fantasy of playing Arachnos VEATs.

 

Suggestions/wish-listing, as these are basic examples, because there is room for more powers to create new paths of play

Night Widow Poisons & Fortunata Poisons

Could the team create a version of Envenomed Blades that only works on selected powers, or might that be beyond the scope of what the system can do? Even going back to playing VEATs on live, I always felt they were rushed and had several missed opportunities. One of those was building off Toxic Dots, aka Spider poisons, and how it could be done. If it's possible, add it to the Night Widow and Fortunata teamwork sets. Just like Envenomed Blades, it adds extra Toxic Damage for a set period but would apply only to attacks with toxic Dots. This might be the challenging part. If damage curves are an issue, perhaps it could be a series of debuffs. For example, Night Widow, if it did no bonus damage, could have the chance to hold like the poison trap and impose -Damage, -To-hit, or any combination thereof. Fortunata might be psychotics with a chance to fear, daze, and confuse.

 

"Hidden" Changes:

Easily the biggest buff to the Night Widow, Huntsman /Bane all with a focus on melee and chance to use crits.  Like what Koopak and Psi-bolt said the change is very nice and I also tested it on my Bane(huntsman) and Widow last night as well.  In my opinion the placate and 100% change is the largest buff out of all the notes.  
Alternate Animations Feature:

These are nice simple quality of life changes and everyone welcomes. 

Animation Changes:

Some of these are minor and some are fairly large.  I don't think most of these are going to be that big of a change as any mess up in your rotation or disruption will set you back to zero.  Were some of these just cleaning up some extra lag time on the animations?

 

Scramble Thoughts is the big standout here but I can't give much feedback on Fortunatas.  

 

Other VEAT Changes: 

What is the goal and choice for effectively shifting the combat cycles for some of the Bane and Crab attacks? Why scale up the cycle time?

 

We also still don't have an effective change to End management.  Yes, let me stop here for a moment and note that you can solve the issue at end game mostly when you have max gear.  But for those who do play the class and not just EA farm, we do have the correct +recovery enhancements, and Endurance/Recovery is still an issue. The inherent could be buffed or reworked altogether. I strongly feel that the Endurance costs for abilities need to have some reductions, especially for toggles.

 

I do want to point out it is not just about the end game builds with optimized loadouts but also about the journey to 50. I'm excluding AE farms as that is not the normal way the game was intended to be played.  

 

I would love for a Bane player to give some feedback or get a chance to test out the changes. 

Edited January 24 by balor

[Dispari]

Pain Tolerance is 15%, yes, fully enhanceable.

[Sovera]

36 minutes ago, balor said:

Hello! A little insight, please? It would be great if one of the team members working on this or some of the people who helped provide feedback to generate these changes could please take a few minutes and talk with us here. What are the goals and objectives with the Arachnos archetypes? Let's get an overview of what issues you all have defined and what can be addressed at this point. Also, feel free to note anything that is outside the scope at this time, so we don't waste time on that topic. Unlike when Tankers were addressed, this part of the community is small, and you might need a call to arms to ask people who play these classes to join in the topic once it is better defined.

 

 

Below I added to the notes on things that should not have been left out as you need to jump into the beta to either check or know off hand.  

 

Arachnos Soldier / Arachnos Widow Updates & Power Customization

• Arachnos Soldiers and Arachnos Widows are now able to customize the colors of their powers in the Power Customization menu.

 

New Widow Powers:

•   Pain Tolerance  Auto: Self Res(All DMG but Psi), +MaxHealth  - Res is 5% and Hp is 160.63 at lvl 50 maybe 15%??? Not listed sadly even in description.

  • Available to Night Widows at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Night Widows who possess Pain Tolerance are resistant to most damage types, and gain additional hit points. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

•   Fate Sealed  Auto: Self +Mezz, +Res(Mezz) - +Mezz is 33% and +Res(Mess) is 15%

  • Available to Fortunatas at Level 1 (after respec).

  • Fortunatas who possess Fate Sealed gain resistance to all control effects and empowers their own control attacks. This power is always on and costs no Endurance. 

 

I like your patch notes with numbers and that's how they should always be IMO.

 

You can see how a power scales (Fate Sealed goes to 34%, for example) by moving the slider to level 50. Top left corner.

Edited January 23 by Sovera

[balor]

18 minutes ago, Dispari said:

Pain Tolerance is 15%, yes, fully enhanceable.

Thanks for double checking, I was just doing fast math on that one. 🙂

Edited January 23 by balor

[Koopak]

On 1/23/2024 at 3:52 PM, balor said:

Hello! A little insight, please? It would be great if one of the team members working on this or some of the people who helped provide feedback to generate these changes could please take a few minutes and talk with us here. What are the goals and objectives with the Arachnos archetypes? Let's get an overview of what issues you all have defined and what can be addressed at this point. Also, feel free to note anything that is outside the scope at this time, so we don't waste time on that topic. Unlike when Tankers were addressed, this part of the community is small, and you might need a call to arms to ask people who play these classes to join in the topic once it is better defined.

So I cant speak for the devs, but I can give some insight from closed testing (Where we often get the chance to talk with the devs directly). Granted my familiarity is mainly with widow.

Generally speaking these were meant to be low hanging fruit changes to try and shore up how people already play the ATs, for instance Pain Tolerance already feeds into the pseudo tank playstyle that became popular earlier in HCing's life as a niche for Night Widow. The same goes for NW's crit and placate buffs to enable its stalker like playstyle. Fortunata had its control capabilities improved to better enable that side of the kit, and some tweaks to make both subATs have a bit better ranged experience.

Soldiers were mostly cleaning up animations times so the set is less clunky and more importantly better performing. Animation times represent one half of the equation for whether an attack is good or not. There's also the tuning to Omega Maneuver to make it less ass to use as well.

While the results are significant in some places, this is not meant as an overhaul of the ATs. Such an overhaul is still on the table in the FUTURE but the goal here was a big QoL pass mostly, address some pain points, and just make the VEATs a little more pleasant to play and build. A good example of this is the Confront change you highlighted, this actually just brings it into parity with other primary taunts in the game. Scrapper, Brute, and Tanker taunts all apply the same debuff already. VEATs were just the odd one out.

Edited January 26 by Koopak