Thank you for keeping tankers in the game.

[ZemX]

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

I've got 3 damage procs in Ground Zero on my Scrapper and they ARE activating but certainly not 90% of the time. So something appears to have gone wrong with proc activation chance in whatever tweaks were done to get it having different target counts for friendly and unfriendly targets. Paging @Captain Powerhouse... 😢

 

I have a suspicion that I haven't been able to test yet.   The patch notes imply the damage and healing effects have been "separated" and the damage effects can hit 16 while the healing can hit a whopping 255.  The latter sounds like an Incarnate heal cap and those heals are massively huge in radius.  Rebirth Core Epiphany, for example, is 60ft radius and 255 target cap.

 

Did... the devs increase the healing radius of GZ?  And is the proc math using THAT to calculate all proc activation rates instead of 15ft for the offensive ones?

 

I did a quick test before logging off and found I couldn't affect random players near me with GZ.  Was that always the case?  CoD says the old power was able to hit "Allies" which should be anybody.  "Teammate" would be a more specific restriction and allow the power to only hit teammates.  That's what I wanted to test and also its range.  

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

I did a quick test before logging off and found I couldn't affect random players near me with GZ.  Was that always the case?  CoD says the old power was able to hit "Allies" which should be anybody.  "Teammate" would be a more specific restriction and allow the power to only hit teammates.  That's what I wanted to test and also its range.  

 

You used to be able to hit any ally with it, including pets and NPCs. And pets of your teammates (I dragged one along a few times as a follower on MM Farming runs!)

 

Grant Cover has a "player teammate (alive)" target restriction but GZ definitely used to only be "ally (alive)". There was no reference to increasing the radius for allies or tightening up the target restrictions in the patch notes, but certainly could be something funky going on...

 

  

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

Did... the devs increase the healing radius of GZ?  And is the proc math using THAT to calculate all proc activation rates instead of 15ft for the offensive ones?

 

 I just checked on Live; in Peregrine Island standing near to a Mastermind with their 6 henchmen plus both their Lores and my own Lores out:

(i) When unteamed; Ground Zero was only affecting my Lore pets. It didn't affect any nearby unaligned NPCs, the MM or their henchmen or pets.
(ii) When teamed, Ground Zero was affecting my Lore pets plus the MM, their henchmen and their Lore pets. Then whenever i tested the radius by moving 16ft away from the MM themselves but still within 14ft of one of their Lore Pets, it wasn't affecting the MM any more but did affect that (closer) Lore Pet.


Personally I think it's more likely that the devs have split the power into two effects - calling both as redirected power executions (like Fulcrum Shift) but the Recharge and/or Activate Period within those two redirects is currently set very low so any proc activations are having a much lower likelihood than they should.

I'm not sure if there's an easy way to code a power that contains two completely separate effects so that both its effects get their proc rates properly reduced by the parent power's current local recharge slotting. However the damage component could be kept within the main parent ability (like Incendiary Swarm Missiles) which would allow that bit to benefit from procs properly... and then the healing component could be applied via a single redirected power execution or pseudopet which has a larger radius and a different target cap. As Ground Zero isn't flagged to accept Accurate Healing sets and it only affects allies; the only healing proc it could conceivably activate would be Panacea so IMO there'd be much less of an issue if it was only the "healing" component that was activating procs less than it should.
AFAIK the alternative would be to set the Recharge and/or Activate Period of each of the redirected power executions very high so that procs work pretty well in it regardless. Like they did with Tanker Lightning Rod.
 

Edited Saturday at 01:18 PM by Maelwys

[Ghost]

Increase tank damage output 

“ahhhhhh they’ve totally ruined brutes forever!!!!!!”

 

Decreae tank damage

”ahhhhhhhh they’ve totally ruined tanks forever!!!!!!”

 

🙄🙄🙄

[Troo]

3 hours ago, Mopery said:

This is also something which vexes me to no end, that presumption of thanks.

The Devs giveth and the Devs taketh away has been the pact since Live, but this smacks of... something.

It is slick, and devious, and it would not bother me at all if they hadn't presumed thanks.

 

There has been more selling and spin related to changes. Oh, and here's your respec.

 

 

[Snarky]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

There has been more selling and spin related to changes. Oh, and here's your respec.

 

 

[ZemX]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

(i) When unteamed; Ground Zero was only affecting my Lore pets. It didn't affect any nearby unaligned NPCs, the MM or their henchmen or pets.
(ii) When teamed, Ground Zero was affecting my Lore pets plus the MM, their henchmen and their Lore pets. Then whenever i tested the radius by moving 16ft away from the MM themselves but still within 14ft of one of their Lore Pets, it wasn't affecting the MM any more but did affect that (closer) Lore Pet.

 

Yep, theory busted.  It's not a separate radius.  Usually they do that by making the power radius large and having an effect with an "inner/outer radius" tag to limit its effect.  One weird thing is the power description says it hits 10 targets when it should say 16.  But yeah, saw the same thing.  The radius of both the heal and the damage portions is the same 15ft.  I guess 255 is just a convenient way of saying they don't care how many allies, pets, etc. are hit with the heal.

 

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Personally I think it's more likely that the devs have split the power into two effects - calling both as redirected power executions (like Fulcrum Shift) but the Recharge and/or Activate Period within those two redirects is currently set very low so any proc activations are having a much lower likelihood than they should.

 

Has to be this.  But there should be no need to set a fixed Activate Period.  Savage Leap already works by executing a power that has the same recharge time as the parent and gets boosts (such as recharge) copied to it.  I would think its proc calcs would run as they are supposed to even considering the recharge time enhancements of the parent.  Not sure why they sometimes use Activate Period for executed powers.  I thought that was only a thing for pseudo-pets like Lightning Rod used to be.

[TheMoneyMaker]

I haven't noticed a noteworthy difference in tank performance.

 

But, to be fair, I saw the patch notes and just decided not to play my tanks anymore.

[PeregrineFalcon]

7 hours ago, Borgold3 said:

Not being a masochist i have no interest in playing a zdps taunt bot (did that way to long on live) and as i can build a brute to have barely less mitigation solo (the same teamed) with more damage - back to City of Brutes it is.

Then it seems to me that the nerfs had the desired effect.

 

People who want to play tanks will still play tanks, and people who want to play melee DPS will play scrappers or brutes.  Which was how it always should have been.

[skoryy]

5 hours ago, Ghost said:

Increase tank damage output 

“ahhhhhh they’ve totally ruined brutes forever!!!!!!”

 

Decreae tank damage

”ahhhhhhhh they’ve totally ruined tanks forever!!!!!!”

 

🙄🙄🙄

 

Scrappers & Stalkers: "They're still at it?"

[Maelwys]

5 hours ago, ZemX said:

Has to be this. 

Yeah; I did a fair bit of testing this afternoon and I'm observing about a 30-40% proc activation rate on my Scrapper's Ground Zero whenever it should be capped at 90%.

I've submitted a Bug Report. Captain Powerhouse has already responded to confirm that the internal redirect power's recharge and cast time look OK; and I think I've managed to rule out anything funny happening with Accuracy not being inherited properly... but something has to be causing the proc rate to plummet.

(At the moment my money's on some overlooked default setting in one of the new redirects that's making the PPM calculation think its base recharge is ~25s...)

 

[Sovera]

On 6/21/2025 at 12:06 PM, Borgold3 said:

Not being a masochist i have no interest in playing a zdps taunt bot (did that way to long on live) and as i can build a brute to have barely less mitigation solo (the same teamed) with more damage - back to City of Brutes it is.

 

Hyperbole, thy name is Borgold, the third.

[Azari]

On 6/20/2025 at 11:30 PM, Erratic1 said:

 

I might at some point contemplate an EA/SS tanker. But my druthers would be EA/KM, that is if KM is ever addressed for its abysmal performance.

Props for using the word druthers 👍👍

[Neiska]

After playing/testing, I put all my tankers on the shelf right next to my Robot MMs. I've kept 2 or 3 in case a friend needs a tanker for whatever reason. But if their goal was to have fewer people playing tanks then they have been successful.

[skoryy]

/e looks up at all the dramatics

/e sighs, shrugs

/e goes back to going 'whee' with my tanks, brutes, scrappers, and stalkers

 

Edited 18 hours ago by skoryy

[Maelwys]

 

On 6/21/2025 at 11:48 PM, Maelwys said:

I'm observing about a 30-40% proc activation rate on my Scrapper's Ground Zero whenever it should be capped at 90%.

I've submitted a Bug Report.

 

FWIW - CP has now confirmed the underlying cause of this has been found and fixed, so expect Ground Zero to start proccing properly again SOON^TM.

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

FWIW - CP has now confirmed the underlying cause of this has been found and fixed, so expect Ground Zero to start proccing properly again SOON^TM.

 

Duuuuuude!!!!!