page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Super Reflexes Adjustments

[The Curator]

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Super Reflexes

• Quote

  Design Notes

  Years ago we ran our first experiment with mutually exclusive powers on Super Reflexes for Sentinel. At the time we attempted to tackle the desire many had to have a toggle version of Practice Brawler. The implementation changed how powers in the set worked depending what version players owned. Feedback we received over time (internally and from the community) was one of confusion. It was never clear for many that taking the power granted mez prot to others. With this change, we are aiming to make the alternate power (Master Brawler) grant the mez protection directly but as a toggle. This does mean the sentinel version will experience some changes, but it is more in line with our direction for mutually exclusive powers going forward.

   

• Practiced Brawler
  • This power now grants scale 2.5 absorb that is strongest the less HP and most end you currently have.
  • This power now takes heal enhancements and sets
• Master Brawler
  • Power is now a toggle
  • Powers that used to grant effects if this power was owned no longer do so, all effects moved directly into this toggle
  • No longer grants absorb nor takes healing enhancements or sets
  • Power is now available to Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers as a mutually exclusive power from Practiced Brawler
• Elude
  • Cast time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
  • Endurance cost increased from 2.6 to 10.4.
  • (PvE only) Recharge reduced to 300s.
  • (PvE only) Duration reduced to 30s.
  • (PvE only) No longer crashes.
  • (PvE only) Defense buff lowered from scale 6 to scale 3.
  • (PvE only) Recovery buff increased from +100% to 150%.
  • Power now takes Heal enhancements and sets.
  • (PvE only) Now grants a 150% regen buff.
  • (PvE only) Now grants mez protection for its duration.
  • (PvP only) Now grants mez resistance for its duration.
  • Should now accept Heal enhancements and sets

[Aracknight]

I do not feel that 30 seconds is an acceptable duration for a t-9.  If this is designed to get people to take the power (Elude), it's now convinced me not to. If I wanted 30 seconds of what this power now offers, I could hit eat some skittles. Then I could take more skittles out of email and never need this power again.

 

Also, can we not just have one Mez resist power that's a click, and one that's a toggle, since that's what people actually wanted, and then add the absorb into both?  It feels like the people who asked for a PB toggle are being punished with a worse version of a power for having the audacity to ask for it.

 

Which means I guess someone asked for a different Elude too, since we appear to have gotten a worse version of that as well.

 

 

I am very unhappy with the changes to SR.  While the changes appear to technically "work" as you have designed them, I do not like them at all.

Edited Friday at 11:18 PM by Aracknight

[ScarySai]

Restore elude's duration and just have it max out your scaling res when you press it.

 

Like, let's be real. Elude isn't taken on any set with elude because every character that can take elude is easily Defense capped. Old Overload and elude in pve essentially only existed as a precaution when doing goofy solo challenges. The changes here don't actually make elude more enticing for SR. 

 

Meanwhile, having it get it's big boost of res at full health and higher regen would maybe do something. It's not getting anything worth the duration loss for a set that can already barely justify it.

[Troo]

(PvE only)

 

If you have to type it that many times, maybe there are bigger issues.

[Bill Z Bubba]

All of my melee SR users have PB single slotted with an end-red. I fire off PB every two minutes right after hasten autofires.

 

My sentinel has MB two slotted, PrevMed heal/recharge and heal/recharge/end. I fire of MB when it's available, needed or not.

 

I remember back on live arguing that PB should be a toggle simply due to the DPS hit I take every two minutes firing off PB. Now, the choice will be a DPS hit with a balancing point of a minor absorb chunk added, or a toggle with with no bonus or DPS hit.

 

This is different than it is currently due to PB on a Sent being 100% inferior to MB. Or maybe 95% inferior if MB ever gets dropped due to lack of end or getting mezzed.

The choice on beta is a more balanced choice. Edit: But honestly, I don't see why anyone would choose MB over PB.


On the Elude side, if I'm remembering the equation correctly and going off of a single 50+5 rec-red slotted and my main's current total recharge buff, it'll recharge in 90 seconds. So 1/3 of the time I can be running around with +150% recovery and regen with no crash? Not to mention what happens if I slot it up? I mean, Bill, as per Mids', is currently showing 303% regen with pretty heavily slotted Health and Physical Perfection. Another 150%, at least, on top of that 1/3 of the time?

I'm not seeing a problem here other than finding extra slots. And that's just talking BZB scrapper. BZB brute ALSO gets an across the board mitigation buff on TOP of these two changes. BZB tank was already practically unkillable. Seems a win-win in my mind other than the respecs needed.

Edited yesterday at 09:20 AM by Bill Z Bubba

[Aracknight]

Yeah, I'm pushing about 300% regen already also.  While Bill z is not wrong, id also like to point out that if i wanted to have to click that often on my secondary, I'd have taken regen.  Impossible, no.  Able to be dealt with in other ways like macros and keybinds, no.  Annoying, absolutely.  If I'm clicking a secondary power, I'm not clicking an attack.

 

One question, however:  Can new elude be clicked while mezzed and used as a break-free, the way that Practiced Brawler can be?

 

Update:  I think maybe it can, but I wasn't sure if clicking it broke the mez or if the mez time just ran out on its own.  I tried several times in RWZ but im not entirely sure.

 

I also wasn't impressed by the regen boost.  I clicked Elude at low health, felt as if I was going to drop anyway, and clicked destiny rebirth instead to keep me up while testing.  Keep in mind that this was with the roughly 300% regen i have going normally from set bonuses.

Edited yesterday at 02:42 PM by Aracknight

[Bill Z Bubba]

19 minutes ago, Aracknight said:

Yeah, I'm pushing about 300% regen already also.  While Bill z is not wrong, id also like to point out that if i wanted to have to click that often on my secondary, I'd have taken regen.  Impossible, no.  Able to be dealt with in other ways like macros and keybinds, no.  Annoying, absolutely.  If I'm clicking a secondary power, I'm not clicking an attack.

 

One question, however:  Can new elude be clicked while mezzed and used as a break-free, the way that Practiced Brawler can be?

 

Update:  I think maybe it can, but I wasn't sure if clicking it broke the mez or if the mez time just ran out on its own.  I tried several times in RWZ but im not entirely sure.

 

I was fine clicking MB often on my SR sent because the base recharge of it was so low. I was refreshing her absorb every 17 seconds or so and that made it worth it.

 

PB's recharge time isn't being altered. So it appears that nothing will change regarding my use of PB on my melee characters. It'll still get fired off right after hasten autofires and remain single slotted with an end-red. But would it be worth it to steal 3 slots from health, dropping my regen down to 291% (a whole 1 HP/sec) so that I could fire off PB every minute for the buffed absorb shield?

 

I don't know. My suspicion is that in the end, and someone else can do the math, what I'd be getting from that added absorb every minute would vastly outweigh that 60 HP over the same time. Would it be annoying having to set PB on auto and instead click hasten when I see it's up? Maybe? Probably. The more I ponder it, though, the more I think I'd get used to it but it WOULD BE an even greater hit to my DPS than it already is. Buuuut... it might also be worth it.

 

Or I take those same slots and stick them in Elude, and for 30 seconds out of every 90, my regen and recovery go through the roof. Go with MB and I get back the DPS I lose with PB.

It's not an easy call.

[FupDup]

Sentinels losing the old MB is gonna sting. 

 

As Bubba mentioned, there's definitely a chance that the tables will turn and MB will be the inferior one now. Powers with less input should generally be less effective than ones that need you to pay attention and click stuff, but it's not really much of a tradeoff here with how stark the strength difference is. Perhaps MB could get either some basic regen or small continuous absorb (like Sent Regen used to have) so it's a little less one-sided. PB should probably still have the bigger effect in the end due to needing to click it, but it shouldn't be night-and-day. 

Edited 22 hours ago by FupDup

[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]

The power icons for Practiced Brawler and Master Brawler should probably be switched around. Also, I think FupDup's idea of a having a lesser continual absorb built into the toggle would be awesome.

[Aracknight]

I guess we'll just call the set "Reflexes" now.

 

 

[drbuzzard]

I gleefully look forward to the expansion of master brawler coverage. I hate, loathe and abhor click status protection. 

 

I will miss sentinel master brawler however. 

[DrunkFlux]

The change to elude will make using elude + unleash potential no longer viable, but also make it largely pointless to even bother taking elude as your already expected to be soft-cap defense, that its only good for its defense debuff resists which, if your a tanker you'll already be about 5% from hard cap defense debuff resistance to begin with, and still likely about 10-15% above soft-cap in most content.

Elude ultimately becomes even more skippable now for non-stalkers with this change.  It'd be more valuable if it also provided resistances.

[drbuzzard]

I'm in the camp where the T9s should fill gaps in defenses, not just pile on more of the same. I guess I can accept that in an SO world more defense might be OK. 

 

However I'd prefer if Elude was made into a resistance power for when the excrement is really hitting the ventilator and you need both kinds of mitigation. This would be likewise for, say Power Surge in electric armor, which should be defense instead of capping resistances which are likely already capped. 

[Hjarki]

I think the Master Brawler expansion is a good idea. I think the change to the power is a terrible one.

 

The change makes Master Brawler a 'dead power' for the purposes of set slotting. In a set that already has extremely limited slotting opportunities, this is a significant nerf. Losing the absorb also makes it directly inferior to Practiced Brawler.