changeling?

[drbuzzard]

Ok, I'm kind of piecing this together from various mentions, but could someone explain in simple terms what this trick amounts to?

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, drbuzzard said:

Ok, I'm kind of piecing this together from various mentions, but could someone explain in simple terms what this trick amounts to?

 

[drbuzzard]

So, correct me if I'm wrong since it is not directly spelled out. There's a bug in shape shifting which recharges powers immediately and perhaps also cuts activation times. This allows flipping between optimal attacks to make a crushingly good attack chain. 

[Maelwys]

You're right it's not, that thread intentionally skirts around the whole "Infinity Changeling" thing (which is a stupid name that keeps making me imagine stuffing Garth Logan into a Von Neumann woodchipper) other than listing a few binds.

 

In short, swapping Kheldian forms essentially nullifies the remaining time of any currently active attack animations. So the effective animation time of each attack becomes a few tenths of a second (best case = two Arcanatime ticks IIRC) whilst still dealing full damage. Endurance consumption obviously skyrockets alongside damage output; but that can be mostly worked around via slotting +End procs in the form toggle powers.

 

The real headaches are that (i) it's a known bug, albeit one that the Devs have effectively said they're not going to discipline anyone for taking advantage of because Kheldians as a whole need a major rework and it's easier for them to just leave this bug in place for now (ii) the resulting graphical vomit from repeatedly form shifting several times every second looks utterly ridiculous and cannot be overridden with Prismatic costumes etc.

[drbuzzard]

Thanks. 

[Thraxen]

It is an exploit really.  Like Maelwys says though they know about it and not fixing atm.  I agree that it looks horrible and sounds even worse.  It also absolutely ruins immersion for me so never even tried it.   

[drbuzzard]

OK, respecced my WS into a build to use it. It does seem to work, and certainly improves damage over my former all human form build. However it certainly is hard on the eyes. I play with sound off so at least I was spared that part. There's also issues in getting stuck in a form you don't want and having to get back to human, but that could be dealt with given practice. 

 

It may well put khelds up in the DPS sweepstakes, but it doesn't really make we want to play mine. I'll wait on a revamp. 

[Maelwys]

32 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

There's also issues in getting stuck in a form you don't want and having to get back to human, but that could be dealt with given practice. 

 

That issue is pretty easy to work around by tweaking your binds to detoggle any active forms prior to activating powers.

 

If you use static binds like the below then appending a command or two to the end of one or more of your movement keys that detoggles both Dwarf and Nova form can help.

/bind 1 "+$$powexec_toggleoff Bright Nova$$powexec_toggleon Bright Nova$$powexec_name Bright Nova Bolt"

 

If instead you use rotating keybind file loads (in order to trigger completely different command strings on keypress and keyrelease) then you'll always be calling the detoggle in the right place + so this should never be an issue in the first place (assuming that the actual loading of the bind files itself doesn't get out of sync... which it never should since you can always just include a few calls within the files for bind#1 to silently reset bind#2 back to its defaults and vice versa!)

 

[drbuzzard]

Appreciate the suggestion, and if I have a hankering to play the khelds again, I'll probably do it. 

[SableShrike]

Agreed on the graphical vomit.

 

My try at a changeling build lasted for a solid five minutes before I said “screw this” and dropped it.

 

I do have Big Stompy Boi on my Shade, but I don’t use it as a changeling.

 

I expect the devs will kill this during any real  Kheld revamp.  Given that, I can’t recommend anyone spend hours and millions of influence building around it.  A more traditional build will be far less affected by changes.

Edited January 2 by SableShrike

[Black_Assassin]

I can recommend putting in the hours and the influence. 

 

If you want to meaningfully contribute on a team and not be mostly deadweight, play infinity changeling.

 

If/when changes come, then at that time rebuild as necessary. Not like you don't have enough respecs to pull all uneeded IO's out in the change comes. 

 

Changeling has made washades playable again.

[tidge]

I don't use the Changeling exploit... although for certain solo content I can 100% understand why it would be appealing. On teams I find it a lot less important to maximize DPS for a Kheldian... this is just me, but I try to be engaged enough with the team and the content being played so that I don't feel like I'm "dead weight". I feel like I can generally swap forms quickly enough to do different things without leveraging the exploit.

 

As for when/if the "changeling exploit" would ever be prevented: I'm not entirely certain that it could be... perhaps by introducing some extra level of "handshaking" between the client and server? This is the sort of thing that strikes me as being a serious amount of work! I'm also not sure what the power's team's consensus is for how to scale up the (spawn clear times, at certain levels) performance of Kheldians without using the changeling exploit... so I feel like its the sort of thing we'll pretty much always have.

 

I have ideas how the Kheldian DPS (and thus clear times) could be improved (mostly by subtle tweaks to the Nova form powers) but my ideas would simply improve the Changeling Exploit.

[Thraxen]

It should be called glitch mode lol

[Laucianna]

It's 100% not needed to play or enjoy your kheldian, the same as if you decide to only play as a human form kheldian 💛

Yes it does almost triple your damage and increase your survivability but this game is SUPER easy, you don't need to do crazy damage to clear content, personally I have the single press binds for my Kheldian and just change the tempo of how fast I go depending on how I feel, I don't always go super speed as it's not needed, plus my fingers would kill me 😜 

I also wouldn't be put off trying it because of the eventual rework, Homecoming are not a triple A studio and these huge reworks are going to take a lot of time and from what I have heard, Kheldians aren't going to be looked at for a while (I would say minimal 2 years until looked at), since they aren't OP even when using the changeling binds to max effect, and the Kheldian community can be very vocal at times (Myself included 😄) 

[Black_Assassin]

14 hours ago, Laucianna said:

I have the single press binds for my Kheldian and just change the tempo of how fast I go depending on how I feel, I don't always go super speed as it's not needed, plus my fingers would kill me 😜 

 

 

QFT

 

 Mostly just pootle about usually at about 60-70% capacity. Feels like my fingers can sustain that for much longer than attempting to go full speed. That tends to be saved for instances of where there is an extreme imbalance in the 50s vs non-50s in the team, against an AV, or when there are other changelings in the team (you know who you are!). Then I feel a need. THE NEED FOR SPEED.

 

I must also add that I use a Razer Naga mouse. So all my actions are being triggered (mostly) by thumb presses. Hence why cannot go full speed for long time spans, as my thumb meat just gets over tenderised 😂

 

 

Otherwise, I just take it chill. 

 

I guess the binds just make the whole experience feel so much more fluid. The feel is more important than the actual raw numbers. As who are we kidding? We aren't going to out damage blasters any time soon.

[Dragotect]

If they aren't going to/can't fix the bug I wish they would do SOMETHING about the noise/visual vomit. For the last week I've had the same level 50 changeling in practically all the TFs I've run.

I was elated to find out they got rid of the ringing with EVERY attack on peacebringers, and have actually enjoyed playing a bit on one, as ever since live it is the single noise in this game that gives me a headache, but with this garbage I'm to the point I'm about ready to just quit the team if one joins on my team to avoid risking them playing the infinite changeling glitch because they didn't get rid of the ringing on form swap.

And no, I don't think that I should have to turn off my game noises JUST so I'm not bothered by exploiters playing their glitch.

Edited Friday at 04:28 AM by Dragotect

[Thraxen]

On 3/6/2025 at 11:19 PM, Dragotect said:

If they aren't going to/can't fix the bug I wish they would do SOMETHING about the noise/visual vomit. For the last week I've had the same level 50 changeling in practically all the TFs I've run.

I was elated to find out they got rid of the ringing with EVERY attack on peacebringers, and have actually enjoyed playing a bit on one, as ever since live it is the single noise in this game that gives me a headache, but with this garbage I'm to the point I'm about ready to just quit the team if one joins on my team to avoid risking them playing the infinite changeling glitch because they didn't get rid of the ringing on form swap.

And no, I don't think that I should have to turn off my game noises JUST so I'm not bothered by exploiters playing their glitch.

I despise glitch mode too. It’s fucking awful aside from I guess numbers wise. And my on is my second favorite character and The first I made when this came back up. 

[SeraphimKensai]

On 3/6/2025 at 11:19 PM, Dragotect said:

If they aren't going to/can't fix the bug I wish they would do SOMETHING about the noise/visual vomit. For the last week I've had the same level 50 changeling in practically all the TFs I've run.

I was elated to find out they got rid of the ringing with EVERY attack on peacebringers, and have actually enjoyed playing a bit on one, as ever since live it is the single noise in this game that gives me a headache, but with this garbage I'm to the point I'm about ready to just quit the team if one joins on my team to avoid risking them playing the infinite changeling glitch because they didn't get rid of the ringing on form swap.

And no, I don't think that I should have to turn off my game noises JUST so I'm not bothered by exploiters playing their glitch.

I did recently suggest expanding the color palette for Kheldians and part of the motivation for that request was for people to be able to use more muted colors, especially when playing changelings.

I can understand why people wouldn't like the sounds/visual clutter (I personally play with my sound off as I've done that since 2004, usually listening to music or watching TV while playing, but I get that's not for everyone).

I'm not opposed to reducing the audio fx and vfx on shape shifting significantly.

[arcane]

On 3/6/2025 at 10:19 PM, Dragotect said:

If they aren't going to/can't fix the bug I wish they would do SOMETHING about the noise/visual vomit. For the last week I've had the same level 50 changeling in practically all the TFs I've run.

I was elated to find out they got rid of the ringing with EVERY attack on peacebringers, and have actually enjoyed playing a bit on one, as ever since live it is the single noise in this game that gives me a headache, but with this garbage I'm to the point I'm about ready to just quit the team if one joins on my team to avoid risking them playing the infinite changeling glitch because they didn't get rid of the ringing on form swap.

And no, I don't think that I should have to turn off my game noises JUST so I'm not bothered by exploiters playing their glitch.

Yeah it’s a fucking disgrace that the developers won’t fix this exploit. I’m not sure if the developer team is being controlled by a few hyper-popular kheldian players or if they’re just plain incompetent.

[Black_Assassin]

Is it really that deep? 

[Laucianna]

On 3/7/2025 at 4:19 AM, Dragotect said:

If they aren't going to/can't fix the bug I wish they would do SOMETHING about the noise/visual vomit. For the last week I've had the same level 50 changeling in practically all the TFs I've run.

I was elated to find out they got rid of the ringing with EVERY attack on peacebringers, and have actually enjoyed playing a bit on one, as ever since live it is the single noise in this game that gives me a headache, but with this garbage I'm to the point I'm about ready to just quit the team if one joins on my team to avoid risking them playing the infinite changeling glitch because they didn't get rid of the ringing on form swap.

And no, I don't think that I should have to turn off my game noises JUST so I'm not bothered by exploiters playing their glitch.

I may be biased here, but there does feel like a lot of things in this game that players can do that visually/audio-ly make it less fun for others from them simply playing their sets, you have peoples buffs that ruin costumes and you can't decide if you want to refuse or not, you have sets that are super flashy with bright lights going off and cluttering the screen with all their affects, and you have powers that are way too loud that they make your ears ring when used.

Changeling is far from the only playstyle to do all of this, and the devs have said it will be removed when they get around to looking at Kheldians, however they have also seen the fact that if they removed the playstyle before a rework then as a whole the AT would take a massive nerf in all aspects. If it is that much of a problem for you however you can always do what others do and list "No changelings" in your advert.

(Also from what I have seen, 95% of changeling players also want changeling gone and the AT to be in a good place without needing it (Myself included))

[tidge]

19 hours ago, arcane said:

Yeah it’s a fucking disgrace that the developers won’t fix this exploit. I’m not sure if the developer team is being controlled by a few hyper-popular kheldian players or if they’re just plain incompetent.

 

I don't like the exploit myself (and don't bother with it)... yet I think there is likely a conjunction of different possible reasons why it hasn't been addressed, including:

1. It may not be straightforward to directly stop the changeling exploit without mucking something else up about the Kheldians.
2. There is probably not consensus on how to improve performance of the Kheldians in the absence of the exploit.

I can't speak to #1, but even without using the exploit I often get glitchy results when trying to change forms!

 

As for #2, I think that 'performance' is somewhat subjective. Personally, I find the Nova form to be great up until about level 16, and not long after it becomes a drag. The Dwarf form is a solid tanker, but IMO miserable in terms of clear times. Pure human forms have their own issues, presumably 'for balance'. <- I don't think any of this is news, but it is how I feel about the Kheldians.

 

I understand the suggestions to make the 'human forms' more resilient and/or do more damage... but those suggestion (my opinion) seem to go against the idea that tri-forms are the core identity of the HEATs.

 

Personally, my suggestion to 'improve Kheldians' would lean towards better (i.e. more complicated) scaling of the damage powers in the (especially) Nova and Dwarf forms. The Nova attacks are essentially low-tier attacks that never really get any better (even with slots) than equivalent low-tier Blaster attacks, but the Nova's never get anything else (unlike Blasters). The Dwarfs (available at level 20) are a little better, but their melee attacks are very much low-tier Tanker attacks, they never get the equivalent of a T6+ melee attack (without exploiting changeling).

 

I'm not suggesting new attacks get added to the Nova/Dwarf forms, more that the attacks could maybe be given different (scaling higher) base damage values at higher levels (of the character) for those forms, in such a way that exemplaring down gets the 'correct scale'.  They should maybe not be as powerful as the higher-tier human-form attacks, but there ought to be a reason to NOT default to changeling exploits to clear and survive enemies.

[arcane]

The AT having low DPS without changeling is nowhere near ample justification to leave literal cheat codes in the game for years. I don’t give a shit if they don’t know how to buff kheldians yet; the exploit/glitch/cheat needs to go now. And in my humble opinion, whichever developer made the decision to delay this fix for several years should be removed from the development team.

 

In other news, my non-cheating kheldian looks forward to the day he won’t inherently be a second-class kheldian for choosing not to abuse the fuck out of an exploit, but, thanks to the aforementioned years that have passed, I’m pretty sure that day will never come.

 

Oh and anyone using language such as “kheldians ‘need’ changeling” is just running interference at this point for the developer that won’t do his job. Cut that shit out.

 

P.S. Bug fixes aren’t nerfs. Enough gaslighting from the changeling defense league.

Edited Sunday at 04:37 PM by arcane

[Black_Assassin]

Why are you so pressed about it? I honestly cannot understand why you are so angry.

[Octogoat]

22 minutes ago, Black_Assassin said:

Why are you so pressed about it? I honestly cannot understand why you are so angry.