Focused Feedback: Various Power Updates

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Gemini2099 said:

The reason why the Sonic Resonance changes and improvements are tiny and not sweeping so far is that it is already a strong set.  And drastic changes could make it very over powered. 

Strongly disagree that Sonic Resonance is already a strong set. It's not even the best at -res (Poison). 

[drbuzzard]

On 1/30/2024 at 7:48 AM, Gemini2099 said:

 

What you are suggesting would radically change sonic resonance.  Is that in line with the spirit of the current dev team intentions? Doesn't seem like it but the can of worms of IO defense set bonuses was opened long ago so you can't really turn the clock back on that. 

 

FF was recently updated for the modern game (IO set bonuses) but Sonic was in a much better shape before the FF rework.   The reason why the Sonic Resonance changes and improvements are tiny and not sweeping so far is that it is already a strong set.  And drastic changes could make it very over powered. 

 

Fix the obvious issues first and then we can re-evaluate if SR needs more changes.  Reducing the recharge of Liquefy is a very good and important step.  Making Sonic Siphon into a true siphon is another obvious change that should happen.  And finally re-evaluating the endurance costs of several powers in the set. 

 

So in summary I disagree the set needs sweeping changes.  Fix what obviously needs to be addressed first then re-evaluate if necessary. 

 

 

Odd, I even went back and re-read my post. I suggested nothing actually. I merely criticized the current state of sonic resonance and said the liquefy changes were not enough to fix it. You didn't actually rebut a single thing I said, but I am somehow wrong anyway. 

 

Sonic is not in the top half of sets. I've played them all fairly extensively, and I can assure you other sets do a better job of amping up a team. Fixing liquefy will help. It will not be sufficient. Making siphon into a siphon could potentially help depending on how it is done (if it buffs the whole team, then yes). However the set will still lack in variety of tools. It would still be mostly  + or - resistance. 

 

If I had to make suggestions we'll go down the powers:

 

1: Sonic Barrier- I suppose keep as is or perhaps add a rather esoteric defbuff resistance like regeneration. 

2. Sonic Siphon - you could go with the siphon and transfer resistance to the team. I've contemplated either -damage (probably not good since it stacks with the resistance being handed out) or -regen. 

3. Sonic Haven- again add some esoteric debuff resistance perhaps endurance drain resistance. 

4. Sonic Cage- nuke this from orbit. Yes, It has limited uses, but even those are frustrating (wall off a sapper or surgeon, but someone will want to kill them and waste their time trying).  Maybe put in an endurance boosting power. There's a lot of heals which are pulses in a toggle. How about an endurance boosting pulse toggle?

5. Disruption field- fine as is

6. Sonic Dispersion- This already does a fair amount, so fine as is. 

7. Sonic Repulsion- it requires an IO to be useful. How about we just make it a knockdown toggle the way it ends up, and cut to the chase? Also fix the noise. 

8. Clarity - since it's fairly redundant, people often skip it or let it gather dust in the tray. How about we throw in half a forge on top of the redundant status protection (+12.5 to hit and +25 damage) ? Keep the short recharge so it can be handed out easily for a change. In a world with lots of team damage buffs that just go to the whole team, a fast recharging single target one is no crime. 

9. Liquefy- I'd rather see the recharge go to 120 instead of 150 so you can actually get it permanent without outside help. The gap is small on rest right now, but why not bite the bullet and make sonic catch up in damage mitigation?

 

OK, now you can complain about suggestions since I've actually made some. 

Edited February 15 by drbuzzard

[Luminara]

Why the fuck is there a debate about revamping Sonic Resonance in a beta feedback thread that doesn't have a revamp for Sonic Resonance?

 

[drbuzzard]

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

Why the fuck is there a debate about revamping Sonic Resonance in a beta feedback thread that doesn't have a revamp for Sonic Resonance?

 

OK, then trim my last post down to 'the liquefy recharge should be 120 seconds so you can perma it by yourself. '. 

[Bionic_Flea]

Storm Blast changes:

 

I've been playing a Storm/Regen on Beta.  While it's been a while since I played Storm Blast, it does seem to feel stronger.  My live build was a Storm/Storm corrupter that I need to transfer over for some head to head comparison. 

 

But from memory, I think this Storm sentinel was putting out as much or more damage as the corrupter, and I would never have thought that was possible.  Again, this is just perception and not hard numbers.  I'll get back to you with a head to head comparison.

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Storm Blast changes:

 

I've been playing a Storm/Regen on Beta.  While it's been a while since I played Storm Blast, it does seem to feel stronger.  My live build was a Storm/Storm corrupter that I need to transfer over for some head to head comparison. 

 

But from memory, I think this Storm sentinel was putting out as much or more damage as the corrupter, and I would never have thought that was possible.  Again, this is just perception and not hard numbers.  I'll get back to you with a head to head comparison.

I have a Storm/Dark Sentinel that seems pretty good on Beta as well.   It's more a grinding down of groups than straight on damage it seems.

[Bionic_Flea]

8 hours ago, lemming said:

It's more a grinding down of groups than straight on damage it seems.

 

Yeah, that's fair.  It doesn't have the satisfaction of something like Assassin Strike or Blaster nukes taking stuff out in one shot.  But you drop Storm Cell, then Cat5, and then your other storm attacks and large groups are dying from a thousand cuts, getting knocked down, trying to run out, and otherwise not firing back.

[kiramon]

On 1/30/2024 at 2:33 PM, Luminara said:

Why the fuck is there a debate about revamping Sonic Resonance in a beta feedback thread that doesn't have a revamp for Sonic Resonance?

 

Because sonic is king and deserves attention always. (As a side note, idk why they don't take drastic changes at this point since we tossed that out the window and put the two shield types into one button for sonic/FF/thermal lol)

 

 

 

 

That being said, give Regen to frostwork to bridge the gap somewhat from losing max hp, even  if it loses the ability to.bypass the Regen cap.

 

 

[tricon]

Can"t check the live servers atm but one question for the Blaster Ninja power: Blinding Powder on the test server

 

Quote

 

Blinding Powder

Ranged (Cone), Foe -To Hit, Sleep, Confuse, -Perception

You throw a handful of Blinding powder in a wide arc at your foes. Most foes will be blinded, and unable to see. Some affected targets may be overcome by the powder that they may start attacking their own allies. If you attack the blinded foes, they will be alerted to your presence, but will continue to suffer a penalty to their chance to hit.

Notes:
The Sleep component of this power is Auto Hit against regular enemies, but a To Hit check is required to against AVs and players, as well as to make secondary effects apply.

Recharge: Long.

 

You can"t enhance the sleep with IO sets. ATM only Accurate To-Hit Debuff ; To Hit Debuff ; Confuse works. Is this intended?

[Troo]

This should address the concern folks were noting. Can't wait to give it a try.

 

11 hours ago, The Curator said:

Stalker Guile: Now grant Hide for 3s that cant be broken by damage in addition a 10s hide that cancels if damaged.

[ScarySai]

Power icons super broken for anyone else?

[Uun]

2 hours ago, tricon said:

Can"t check the live servers atm but one question for the Blaster Ninja power: Blinding Powder on the test server

 

 

You can"t enhance the sleep with IO sets. ATM only Accurate To-Hit Debuff ; To Hit Debuff ; Confuse works. Is this intended?

That's not a change. That's the way it is on the live servers. Blinding Powder does 4 things, 3 of which require a tohit check. My understanding is that the sleep kicks in if none of the other effects are applied. That said, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to enhance the sleep.

[drbuzzard]

Made up a thermal/fire defender on test to try the melt armor changes. Ran it at low level a little bit first to test all the new player stuff, and that seemed to work fine. Did a DFB with some people and killed a zombie on purpose. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, ahem. 

 

Back to the testing report. 

 

Freebied my way up to 50 and decked it all out with shiny fancy IOs and stuff (118 global recharge before perma hasten). Then I took them to Cimerora to see if I could get an ITF going since test was pretty full. Silly me. Off once more to solo defenderland. I did the same thing as on the sonic- the repeat mission contact initial mission at +1/x4. 

 

Owing to the fact that melt armor was up all the time ( recharge was 24 seconds iirc) my defenderly pace was a bit better than on the sonic/sonic. I was not as safe as having liquefy up most of the time, and I did have to pop hibernate once to save my butt from a second spawn getting aggroed. Warmth being fast recharging was my saving grace. I finished the mission easy enough. Would have preferred a team test but getting a team on test is rather rare. The odd thing is that heat exhaustion now recharges more slowly than melt armor. I think I would prefer them to be identical because it would synch up. 

[Player-1]

59 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Power icons super broken for anyone else?

 

Hello Sai,

 

Can you please provide a screenshot of which icons are broken?

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, Troo said:

This should address the concern folks were noting. Can't wait to give it a try.

 

 

Agreed. That three seconds should do nicely to hit a follow-up attack .

[ScarySai]

10 minutes ago, Player-1 said:

 

Hello Sai,

 

Can you please provide a screenshot of which icons are broken?

 

Last time I was on, all of them that could stack. I only saved one screenie of the crab though,, seemed to be every buff, including evolving armor stacks,

 

I had only logged on the crab and axe/bio before work. Here you can see the gaussian proc going nuts. It's purely visual, combat attributes did not show them as still active.

 

Edited February 1 by ScarySai

[WindDemon21]

On 11/22/2023 at 11:46 AM, The Curator said:

Chain Lightning:

• Chain decay per jump is 0.18, down from 0.20
• Chain decay caps at 0.64, up from 0.60
• Chain fork is now 1,1,1,1,2 instead of 2,2
• Sentinel fork is now 1,1,2 instead of 2,2
• Chain delay is now 0.3, up from 0.2
• Chain radius is now 10', down from 15'
• Damage scale now 1 and 0.04x4 over 2.2s, up from 0.827 and 0.10x4 over 2.2s
• Recharge 16s, down from 20s
• Accuracy improved to 1.15, up from 1.0

Again, this power needed BUFFS only straight up. There is no reason to lower the chain distance as the chaining at 15ft already still had many issues.

 

The power still needs a larger recharge reduction to account for this and the fact that it literally won't proc almost at all, and the end cost still terribly needs reduced to account for this as well. The power should still have, maybe with these slight damage fixes, a 12s recharge and about 11 end cost. The power will still miss all or half of the mob if it misses on the first target, or chains in the wrong direction.

 

Again, keep the 15ft jump radius, and lower the recharge/end to about 12 each. This power is still not ok and falls far below any other regular aoe.

 

Due to: missing all or half the mob even at max acc chance

Not taking procs

Having pretty much no useful secondary effect

Still lower damage on the rest of the aoe and overall besides the first target which is just barely over regular aoe values.

 

So it should have MUCH better end/rech values to compensate for this verus other regular aoes.

 

TBH also with the set not really having anything to actually use to start the alpha, besides jet stream, jet stream (on top of all ranged cones really but especially here), should have a 16 target cap so you can at least use it's KD to start the fight and have it hit the whole mob.

[Mezmera]

To the newest version of TK: 

 

The addition of a Mass Levitate mechanic with splash damage is the icing on the almost good cake that was baked.  It gives high value to your first power pick out of the gate, allows for more utility than the other soft controls in the set and gets you a nice way to shut it off to get some actual control over targets for a few seconds.  

 

After testing the change to add Levitate into the mix there were a few things I could see adapted to it with this newest patch:

 

-  If you found yourself taunted or distracted it was hard to find the anchor which now it looks like any target in that field being Levitated will trigger them all to get lifted.  Seems like I was beat to the punch on this.  

 

-  I could see the endurance being lowered by half and it was done by 2/3

 

-  Lastly to be somewhat fair to the critters I could see the after effect of the immobilize going away once TK drops but also to be fair to Controllers I could see it being 5s after their Levitate reads the damage. (It may be this way now, I'm just going at those groups hard as they are taking the knockup so I have little time I'm sitting back watching)

 

It feels strong without being OP, 10/10 would take this new TK, it'll be a staple on both doms and controllers and it seems it'll even serve controllers a little better.  It's fun, thematic AND effective, love it!

Edited February 1 by Mezmera

[Player-1]

1 hour ago, WindDemon21 said:

Again, this power needed BUFFS only straight up. There is no reason to lower the chain distance as the chaining at 15ft already still had many issues.

 

The power still needs a larger recharge reduction to account for this and the fact that it literally won't proc almost at all, and the end cost still terribly needs reduced to account for this as well. The power should still have, maybe with these slight damage fixes, a 12s recharge and about 11 end cost. The power will still miss all or half of the mob if it misses on the first target, or chains in the wrong direction.

 

Again, keep the 15ft jump radius, and lower the recharge/end to about 12 each. This power is still not ok and falls far below any other regular aoe.

 

Due to: missing all or half the mob even at max acc chance

Not taking procs

Having pretty much no useful secondary effect

Still lower damage on the rest of the aoe and overall besides the first target which is just barely over regular aoe values.

 

So it should have MUCH better end/rech values to compensate for this verus other regular aoes.

 

TBH also with the set not really having anything to actually use to start the alpha, besides jet stream, jet stream (on top of all ranged cones really but especially here), should have a 16 target cap so you can at least use it's KD to start the fight and have it hit the whole mob.

 

Hello WindDemon21,

 

I ask that you give the changes a try in tandem with the buffs to Storm Cell. The changes to Chain Lightning can be condensed to allowing it to disperse much more quickly through a crowd as it forks much more rapidly, while also receiving a 20% recharge reduction, 15% accuracy boost, and only a 5% reduction in damage with most of it being front-loaded and ending up at the same level of decay as beforehand. The reduction to the chain jump distance is something we had to do for balance as otherwise this version would have been overtuned!

 

 

[EmperorSteele]

So, New TK again.

 

Even with the shut-off-on-hit now working (sort of, going to hit up bug reports in a moment), TK + Lev AoE is still an effective combo.

 

Castellum Quarter, Cimerora, on my Mind/Kin. Using a set-up strat of Mass Hyp and Fulcrum Shift, I then fly above the crowd, hit TK, and follow up with Psinado, Terrorize, and Levitate. This USUALLY kills MOST of the +3 spawn. But then I spend a solid couple minutes picking off stragglers. This is a bit more effective than picking up Wall of Force from the Force of Will pool for a 3rd AoE. If I rearranged my build to fit that in, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be much left of large spawns.

 

That this is only a roughly once-a-minute combo is fine. If I'm on a fast moving team, this set-up takes too long and has too many points of failure, so I'll just keep doing what I always do: pew-pew with my single target attacks. It's not the hugest game changer, but DAMN does it FEEL good!

 

There is ONE thing, though: I see the power grants the target a fly speed. Guess what happens if said target is immune to both immob and repel?

 

THEY FLY UP AT ME AND STAB ME IN THE FACE! x_X

[Mezmera]

22 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

So, New TK again.

 

Even with the shut-off-on-hit now working (sort of, going to hit up bug reports in a moment), TK + Lev AoE is still an effective combo.

 

Castellum Quarter, Cimerora, on my Mind/Kin. Using a set-up strat of Mass Hyp and Fulcrum Shift, I then fly above the crowd, hit TK, and follow up with Psinado, Terrorize, and Levitate. This USUALLY kills MOST of the +3 spawn. But then I spend a solid couple minutes picking off stragglers. This is a bit more effective than picking up Wall of Force from the Force of Will pool for a 3rd AoE. If I rearranged my build to fit that in, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be much left of large spawns.

 

That this is only a roughly once-a-minute combo is fine. If I'm on a fast moving team, this set-up takes too long and has too many points of failure, so I'll just keep doing what I always do: pew-pew with my single target attacks. It's not the hugest game changer, but DAMN does it FEEL good!

 

There is ONE thing, though: I see the power grants the target a fly speed. Guess what happens if said target is immune to both immob and repel?

 

THEY FLY UP AT ME AND STAB ME IN THE FACE! x_X

 

They probably shouldn't allow sets in TK but one or two of those new Slow/Rech/End Dsyncs would do well in this one.  

[EmperorSteele]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

 

They probably shouldn't allow sets in TK but one or two of those new Slow/Rech/End Dsyncs would do well in this one.  

 

With the end cost going from 3 to 1, not a huge concern.

 

But yes, i had the same thought and bought 10 of those =P

[SwitchFade]

Ok so, now that the stalker hide proc has been flagged not interruptable by damage for 3 seconds....

 

What was the point of even making the change to it in the first place?

 

There is no test case where more seconds matter, it's essentially the same as before because any stalker using it is firing a follow up in under 3 seconds or has already killed everything and out of combat, which means hide will naturally kick back in several seconds later. Now, if this was a fix because the first fix to something else caused unintended side effects, that's completely understandable. Yet we went through this process with little information.

 

This was a pointless exercise in futility to induce change, cause confusion, ask for testing and provide a fix that doesn't because nothing was broken.

 

It looks like this was an unintended consequence and no one was willing to own that and explain.

 

Trust is hard to earn, care is required to maintain it. Food for thought.

Edited February 2 by SwitchFade

[Luminara]

19 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

What was the point of even making the change to it in the first place?

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=set_bonus.set_bonus.stalkers_guile

 

That's what's on the servers right now.  Not the beta, the live build.  The Cancel on Damage flag wasn't added to the proc in the beta build, it's always been there.  They didn't make any changes to the proc until they added the 3s uninterruptible Hide.

[Booper]

13 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Ok so, now that the stalker hide proc has been flagged not interruptable by damage for 3 seconds....

 

What was the point of even making the change to it in the first place?

We didn't change that, that has been there from the start.

 

What did change is we implemented a fix to the Cancel on Damage event. Before, it was unreliably canceling. Under the hood, there was an engine bug that prevents the cancel from working most of the time. It would depend on the ordering within the combat tick, so damage could cancel but seemingly random. Recent testing that was requested by Player-1 shows that on Live you would see the Stalker ATO proc get canceled 14% of the time, which for what it's worth is what similar tests showed for Beta.

 

Regardless, we have added a small buff to the Stalker ATO and Placate powers by giving them a small window where they will not cancel via damage. So instead of having an 86% success rate, you'll now have a 100% success rate within those windows.