page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Energy Aura Adjustments

[The Curator]

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Energy Aura

• Overload
  • Cast time reduced from 3s to 1.67s
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) Duration reduced from to 180s to 30s
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) Recharge reduced from 1000s to 300s
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) Defense lowered from scale 6 to scale 2.5
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) Psi/Toxic defense lowered from scale 4.5 to scale 2
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) MaxHP buff decreased from +40% to +30%
  • (PvE Only, Non-Tankers) Crash eliminated (Tanker version is not affected by this change)
  • (PvP Tanker Only) Duration increased from 30s to 180s
  • (PvP Tanker Only) Recharge increased from 300s to 1000s
  • (PvP Tanker Only) Power now has an endurance crash after effect ends

[Night]

[Apologies for cross-posting, I was told that's the best way to give feedback specifically to the relevant T9s while there's no Focused Feedback thread specifically for those changes]

 

TLDR: The way those T9s are presented are a massive nerf to what an armor T9 offers and the lowered recharge is not worth the massively reduced scaling and duration, cutting down a power's duration to 1/4th and sometimes 1/6th of its current duration, and the quadrupled activation cost. Those are not worthwhile tradeoffs for what we have now and a huge departure from what those T9 armor powers offer currently.

 

Reduced scaling means you'll be hit more often and harder when going up against anything at a higher difficulty or against any enemy group with ToHit buffs, meanwhile right now Elude/Overload/Kuji-In Retsu softcaps you all on its own and it's very useful if you wanna survive an encounter, activate it when getting up with a wakie or a rez and get right into the fights, or if you run out of endurance and don't wanna die from all your toggles dropping. 30 seconds is also not long in a fight and when you activate a godmode you wanna feel powerful and survive whatever bad situation forced you to pop it in the first place.

 

 

I think that defense/resistance-oriented T9s should still keep their current scaling, putting you at defense softcap out of the box is what they do now and lowering that would only be an unwanted nerf. It's also useful in situations when you're just getting up with a wakie, or running out of endurance and needing to get your defenses back instantly so you don't get defeated, or getting attacked by an ambush or a giant monster (particularly during a zone event) and activating that so that you can get right into the action and ignore your actual defensive toggles for the moment. That's also an argument for keeping the endurance cost low as quadrupling it only removes its use as a panic button.

 

Level difference between you and the enemy and their rank will still affect their accuracy to a significant degree even if it's an accuracy modifier instead of ToHit one, there's usually many consecutive attacks swinging at you every few seconds and that builds up. Also big number is nicer than small number.

 

 

Using Moment of Glory as a blueprint for godmodes is also misguided. Moment of Glory started out as a clicky that maxed out your defense and resistance (to all but psi, and probably toxic) for a few minutes but it set your health to 25% and prevented you from healing in any way (aside from increasing your max health number via Dull Pain). The way the power worked was changed because preventing yourself from regenerating health went against the idea of Regeneration as a whole. It was also a death sentence when fighting Psychic Clockwork or Carnies.

 

That way the new (current) Moment of Glory was also changed was so that you would be able to survive a mob's alpha strike, the initial mass of attacks a big group hits you with when you first charge in, before the rest of the team could join you to help you or so that enemy attacks stagger out instead of hitting all at once, allowing for the bulk of the set, its passive regeneration and clicky heals, to keep you alive. 

 

 

Since Moment of Glory seems to be the main inspiration for these changes, we must look at what Regeneration as a set was, from the wiki:

"This set has been in the game for Scrappers since Issue 0."

"This set was included with the original release of Stalkers in Issue 6."

"This set was proliferated to Brutes in Issue 21."

 

For the massive bulk of the game's lifespan, Regeneration was not a set designed to be the sole tank of a team and with its many, many nerfs, only recently was Regeneration given a long-deserved glow-up. This kinda design does not apply to every other armor set.

 

That and low-duration buff powers provide a massive benefit, so instead of nerfing their scaling, they should be heavily buffed to make you actually unkillable for this heavily reduced duration. Even now Moment of Glory offers ~70% defense and resistance values.

 

 

 

There are three main suggestions I propose for those suggested T9s:

 

1. Make them into a mutually-exclusive option to the current existing T9s that retain their current existing scaling, features, cost, and their current existing durations without any changes.

 

2. Make them into a mutually-exclusive option to the current existing T9s that retain their current existing scaling, features, cost, and their current existing durations while also adding minor buffs to the current existing T9s, such as simply removing the crash and reducing their recharge times while still being fully enhanceable, and changing nothing else, no nerfs.

 

3. Try out the idea of applying a form of adaptable recharge into the T9s and turn them into Incarnate Hybrid-style toggles that have a maximum duration (2 minutes and 3 minutes depending on T9, as they have now) but can be detoggled early for reduced recharge time. So that each second of use adds one second of recharge time. Meaning that if you toggle a T9 for 30 seconds, it goes on a 30 second cooldown, but you can also toggle it for its full duration of 2 minutes or 3 minutes depending on the T9, with their full current scaling and all current benefits, and afterwards let it go on a 2 and 3 minute recharge respectively. It could be adjusted so that the power has a base recharge of ~30s onto which use-time is added, so that if you use the T9 for 10 seconds, the recharge time is 40 seconds, and so on, but that's for later.

 

Personally I like option 2 since it's a simple buff to the powers' functions and covers the goals of the changes without turning them into completely different powers. At the very least those suggested T9s should be added as a mutually exclusive option to choose between that and the current T9s and not be forced into these suggested versions as they deviate so much from their current originals that they do not cover the same bases anymore.

[Faraday Gauss]

New Overload could use some +Recovery or +Regen, or perhaps some small across the board + Resist All. Or more radically, some Absorb as it says it absorbs damage in the current text but goes on to say that it actually increases Max Health.

 

On my Sentinel, Stalker, and Scrapper, I am already at Max Health without Overload and my defenses are softcapped at 45%, so currently all it does is boost defenses for higher level encounters. While the same could be said of an Invul or Super Reflexes build, their T9s boost resists and regen/recovery respectively, while also boosting various debuff resists in Invul and granting max speed in SR. It would be preferable for the new Overload to offer some complimentary layer(s) of defense.

[DrunkFlux]

This'll gimp(yes, gimp) my ninjitsu/energy aura stalker if it were to go live, purely and exclusively because I use that alongside unleash potential.  At best, i'd just be activating it but i kind of LIKED the crash version on my stalker as I would use that to not only exceed soft cap but also help my endurance management.  This change kind of guts that.  It may sound good on paper to make it more practical for a less experienced player, its not so much viable for a veteran who's combining the effect with pools such as unleashed potential.

It'll just be back to skipping the t9s for me on defensive toons, because i'd already be at soft-cap defense on a good build to begin without it, freeing a slot for other things.  But also freeing up 3 slots for other things on my stalker as there'd be no reason to take unleash potential, it'd just be back to taking regular fighting pool again, killing build diversity.

[Wavicle]

Of all the new t9s, this is the one I feel is suffering the most for the changes.

All of the others are getting something new added to help compensate for what is being lost, but not this one.

Perhaps Overload could Heal you to full upon activation?

Or perhaps Overload could provide a Trawl effect on enemies around the player upon activation?

SOMETHING to help make up for what has been lost and to make the power more valuable. Right now it's not doing very much for a lot of builds.

[Plutoria]

So i've always been a longtime user and fan of Energy aura even back on live days when it was considered a terrible armor set ( was brute at the time). I've been very happy with the changes over the years and how it has evolved. That said... EA without all the new QoL and balance upgrades its had over the years, just out of the box, having access to original values and overload, felt better as a whole than it does now with this new T9 change. It is absolutely still usable and serviceable as a armor set, and does it job even without access to a T9. EA has always in it's design had resist and defense holes to plug, it is possible to build around them, all of this to say, the T9 was never mandatory in a way that it's existence or non existence muted the set. That said, what Overload did do, was allow opportunities to turn the tide of battle, it's use felt like a truly "heroic" mechanic, allowing you to push through really punishing situations to either hold the line till your team could overcome or in a solo regard, give you the breathing room to over come cascading defense failure situations. It worked as a great counter play to heavy debuffing situations, because EA has always had lower DDR base and many of its defense holes are often linked to attacks that carry punishing -defense debuffs. With the  new changes on HC ( for me I like higher difficulty experiences) it worked as great counter play. Even the crash was serviceable, because all that was required was at worse, remove yourself from combat for a few seconds, pop a blue and retoggle. At best you timed energy drain really well ( which was rewarding play), popped a blue just at the right moment, or you used your incarnate or accolades ( demonic aura/Magus). If the crash was the issue and desire for this change, maybe throw in the Hasten penalty. If this was a change because the original ability was  perceived as too niche or overpowered, that is another conversation. 

 

Even with the harsh reductions of Hp and Def values, via testing, those values are still serviceable from the testing I did in extreme min/max builds intended for hard mode content and high survivability situations in a solo scenario.  This is just talking about the numbers, it is still a hard nerf and requires very specific building but it's workable and just now consumes more slotting dedication for lesser results compared to original not slotted or heavy slotted. It is a heavy reduction no matter how you look at it. However the 30 second duration completely annihilates this T9. I have many sents, stalkers, scrappers, brutes using EA. I have not used the tank variation, my assumption for the positive feedback for tankers is because tankers by default tend to by design be defensive overkill, so their version and positive reception of the "weaker" but higher cycle use version makes perfect sense as the many holes that EA came with baseline are much easier to plug and shrug off without as many sacrifices to slotting and bonus building and add in the higher base HP tankers come with. I can already see that using MIDs for tanker variations. However, that luxury isn't carried over for the other ATs. The balance of resists values and plugging holes in defense and resists for neg energy, psi, toxic and depending on the build even fire/cold come up short and are often punishing. So extra attention when building and planning often has to take this into account.

 

Overload in it's current state, personally, I have found it works as a nice speedbump buffer for opening alpha strikes to absorb possible defense debuffs with its added ( even though heavily reduced) base defense and the all important 34% DDR. I have always ran my EA with ageless anyway because DDR is always a bit short for this set. During that 30 seconds, it does it's job in absorbing initial round of debuffs or as a quick reaction counter to cascading defense. If that is the design plan for the T9, to absorb that single alpha strike, it technically works. Did I need to pop a t9 to absorb alpha strikes before the change or after the change? Not often. Does it's currently help with countering cascading defense failure? Technically it does for the very limited 30 seconds it is available. Does it provide the ability of a meaningful impact in difficult content or as a true "oh shit" button  or provide a heroic holding the line moment? It no longer provides that. As of now it works as a slightly better Shadow Meld, because it has baked in DDR. Personally I was never fan of shadow meld. But having a T9 is still nicer than having nothing at all.

 

On the topic of how overload use to work on high recharge builds and how high recharge builds use the current version (non tankers). Previously I was able to achieve extremely high uptime and reliable use of old overload. In short, Overload runs it course, I can pop either accolade (demonic/Magus) and or Incarnate Melee while waiting on Overload cooldown and by the time those wore off, I could activate Overload again, providing very high uptime. In normal 54 content, yes this was absolute overkill. Even in normal content, I rarely had to even play that way unless in situations of extreme bad rolls of heavy defense debuffs (like taking on extra groups of Arachnos/ambush mission). This was mostly useful in hardmode content, it by no means trivialized hard mode, it just allowed Energy Aura to be a reliable armor set ( especially for squishy ATs) or for a brute to leverage the higher HP cap and actually tank better than the stalker/scrapper/Sent variant. Brute overload is hurt honestly the most right now with this new change because the performance of "tanking" via Energy Aura baseline was already very close on par with scrappers, and this 30 second duration destroys what little leverage brutes had when using this set. And this is coming from someone that stopped playing brutes long ago and joined team scrapper =(

 

Build variation before changes in regards to Overload:

 

On a scrapper I often only used 2 basic recharge IOs or Doc wound recharge, the baseline overload provided enough generous buffs that nothing more was needed.

 

Sent/Stalker usually fully slotted for defense (shield wall for the energy/Neg) resist and LoTG or absorb proc or Doc wound recharge) since HP was already capped without Overload and the extra defense helped plug holes that the scrapper build more easily achieved due to different slotting priorities. Sent in general had lower baseline ( now changed in this version).

 

Brute: Slotted with health enhancement, recharge and sometimes a single LotG. capping out on Health allowed less harsh damage spikes during hard mode encounters where stalker and scrappers would see more frequent spikes due to lower resist and HP values. It made the brute the safer and more relaxed choice for actual tanking purposes.

 

Using this same build logic but with the new T9 changes throwing myself not even in hardmode content but literally 4/8 54 arachnos, carnie and CoT ambush missions, (all of which could previously accomplish with ease using the T9 to counter holes and debuffs )the brute could not survive with the same ease as the scrapper. The scrapper being able to take out lethal targets and AoE faster literally made all the difference. The stalker mowed things even faster but was still built less sturdy than the scrapper and would see more frequent spikes in health and a few deaths from cascading defense events and nasty well timed Psi nukes ( the brute version still died more and had more death scares in spite of having much higher psi resists) and this was honestly lazy mode on my end using KM for offense because I happened to already have 3 KM/EA built on test made for hard mode survival. The sent performed better than the brute too(beam rifle/EA). Now I haven't used brutes as a main character in many years, only on testing server to test builds for comparison to create tighter scrappers/sent/stalkers builds. It was kinda sad seeing how the brute variant was actually suffering the worst from just the T9 changes due to slower kill speed and the 30 seconds of T9 just not being beneficial long enough ( for any of the non tankers but their DPS could at least compensate). T9 aside, cycling accolade and melee incarnate was still more reliable and useful. Which is the secret sauce for most of my dominators tanking the same content and only needing a base 20-25 defense and 40% resists.

 

On the topic of abusing recharge, self buffed with extreme recharge builds, baseline, I pop overload and i'm looking at 1:28 recharge time, with good FF procs, it quickly drops to about 68 seconds on average. This initially seemed promising but I kept finding even with the extremely fast recharge and "on paper" high uptime, the 30 seconds literally wasn't enough to make true impactful difference compared to just not using the T9 and popping a couple purples or greens from my tray to counter situations of defense cascading. Going back to the use of Melee incarnate / Rop and accolade, basically being all that was really required to push through which can be replicated by any AT or armor set. That said, having a 30 second shadow meld with baked in DDR is still better than having nothing. Personally even if vastly less effective than it once was, I'll still put it to good use. It was a excellent and in some situations/builds a massive tanking tool, now it is more along the lines of a clean up defense debuffs for a few seconds clicky. Still useful, just radically different in usage and impact. Even if this is the dead set direction the HC team wants to go, 60-45 second duration would still make a world of difference. That 30 seconds is not always dedicated to exclusive offense/attacking, now a precious short window for eliminating dire threats or source of heavy debuffs. At 30 seconds you can't "ride it out". 180 seconds was amazing and often, was more than usually required for most situations. With the recharge changes and lower values, I think 60 or 45 second duration might be the sweet spot across build types. Personally I like the idea of keeping the current Overload and let others mutually choose the new one or original, everyone wins that way.

[Captain Powerhouse]

Note on the Crashing T9 power changes:

 

We have decided to roll these changes back. At least at this point there are no plans to revisit them in the future. That of course might always be subject to change.

 

Due to the holiday break, not sure when the rollback will be hitting the open beta server, so if anyone still wants to play around with the current versions for any reason you might have a few days to do so.

 

Other changes to any of the sets those powers are in will likely continue testing and iterating and we will continue to gather feedback. Do note nothing is considered final until it reaches release candidate status.

 

[This particular thread might be locked soon since this is the only change being discussed on this thread but that will be a call made by forum mods]