Focused Feedback: Devices, Stealth and Misc Power changes

[Thezanman]

Also, both Time Bomb and Trip Mine seem to do significantly less damage than before, which is probably fair, but it is not mentioned anywhere in the patch notes. I do think that the damage was nerfed by too much, as now Trip Mine seems to do about half as much damage as Frost Breath, whereas before it did twice as much.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Thezanman

[Novacat]

Numbers on bomb and mine seem to be about what the tooltips promise before any slotting.

Disintegrate seems to spread even on kill shots once more, so that's fixed.

 

Trips however don't always seem to trigger as toebombs unless the thing's moving.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Novacat

[Thezanman]

28 minutes ago, Novacat said:

Numbers on bomb and mine seem to be about what the tooltips promise before any slotting.

Disintegrate seems to spread even on kill shots once more, so that's fixed.

 

Trips however don't always seem to trigger as toebombs unless the thing's moving.

Weird, Trip Mine seemed to work just fine for me dropping it in a group of stationary enemies. And the tooltips are correct, I was referring to live damage values.

[AlwaysAPrice]

The movement debuff is a pretty minor inconvenience that suits the power concept of just...moving stealthily (though in fairness the character with it I've played the most is SR and has Quickness to offset it). Why not remove Stealth's suppression of half its Defense bonus in combat instead? I imagine there's a concern about having too much Defense available but builds are still limited to 4 pools, one of which almost always goes to Speed for Hasten anyway. Having one more option for a small but consistent chunk of Def alongside CJ, Hover, Weave, or Maneuvers would increase build flexibility, give people more room to build for concept while chasing mechanical performance.

 

Though, wording question about the Invisibility change: does 'most of your Defense will suppress' mean it'll suppress your overall Defense when you attack with Invisibility on, or just most of the Defense granted by Invisibility itself? If it's just the latter and some of it remains in effect on top of whatever else you have, then that could make Concealment a viable contender for build space anyway, albeit at the cost of an extra power pick, especially if the unsuppressed value falls between CJ's (1 power pick) and Weave's (3 picks).

[Thezanman]

11 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:

The movement debuff is a pretty minor inconvenience that suits the power concept of just...moving stealthily (though in fairness the character with it I've played the most is SR and has Quickness to offset it). Why not remove Stealth's suppression of half its Defense bonus in combat instead? I imagine there's a concern about having too much Defense available but builds are still limited to 4 pools, one of which almost always goes to Speed for Hasten anyway. Having one more option for a small but consistent chunk of Def alongside CJ, Hover, Weave, or Maneuvers would increase build flexibility, give people more room to build for concept while chasing mechanical performance.

 

Though, wording question about the Invisibility change: does 'most of your Defense will suppress' mean it'll suppress your overall Defense when you attack with Invisibility on, or just most of the Defense granted by Invisibility itself? If it's just the latter and some of it remains in effect on top of whatever else you have, then that could make Concealment a viable contender for build space anyway, albeit at the cost of an extra power pick, especially if the unsuppressed value falls between CJ's (1 power pick) and Weave's (3 picks).

It's definitely referring to the defense granted by Invisibility, not global defense.

[HelenCarnate]

Pools > Concealment > Invisibility:  Endurance cost lowered from 0.65 to 0.2275. You are now be able to attack while this power is active, but should you attack, most your defense will suppress.

 

Does this still suppress damage, taunt and other auras that affect mobs like Beta Decay or Frigid Protection?  Finding out.

 

Edit-

Damage auras- No suppression (at least on Blazing Aura and Irradiate Ground)

Toggles that affect mobs- No suppression (only tested Frigid Protection assuming the others are the same)

 

Honestly this ruins the power and just having stealth and stealth IO in sprint is just as good.  It used to be handy for a way to stealth missions without having to turn off damage auras and now it has to be done regardless. 

Edited August 12, 2019 by HelenCarnate

[ReverendScott]

Trip Mine and Time Bomb are ignoring both Damage enhancements (damage procs included) and the Sudden Acceleration KB to KD IO. They do the exact same damage with Armageddon/Obliteration as they do unslotted. 

Recharge enhancements seem to lower the recharge though. 

Edited August 12, 2019 by ReverendScott

[KadillTheFirst]

I personally am against the physics changes to the propel objects. None of the reasons are necessarily particularly solid but here they are.

 

1. I feel it loses the original charm and flavor of the game, the slightly wonky physics on stuff like that is something i remember fondly

 

2. It's way less funny. I just recently made a grav controller and i find these objects bouncing around to be hilarious and a main attraction of the set.

 

3. Not so much a reason but more just a question: why the change? If it ain't broke why fix it? I completely understand wanting to make balance changes and fix things that prevent intended mechanical interaction. But I'm just not sure what the need for an aesthetics change is here. I'm not saying this to say "You're wrong for wanting it" but rather just curious what the reasoning is so i can see the other side of the argument.

Edited August 12, 2019 by KadillTheFirst
Spacing

[Necate]

Hi ! Thx for this patch !

No fix or katana display bug in ninja mastery tool (Sentinel) ?

 

[Myrmidon]

18 hours ago, Leandro said:

That conversation started because of Stealth IOs (yes, I know, not supposed to balance around IOs, but can't deny they exist) making the Stealth pool a horrendous choice. They arguably are still worse than slotting a Stealth IO in Super Speed, but they shouldn't be a complete joke, at least.

 Concealment pool. Unless you’re changing the name, don’t confuse the new people.😁

[Bartacus]

It says that Time Bomb's changes are only for devices on blasters. Is Trip Mine's change proliferated to traps sets then? 

 

Honestly, I'm no devices expert but I'd guess that Time Bomb (while better now) is probably still not terribly useful in most teams. Maybe that's ok. But I think the trade off for having to wait for it to go off should be more damage or some other effect (like a debuff). Doesn't have to be strong or overpowered, but if I'm in a group and I'm a devices player I can't imagine very many scenarios where I waste time using Time Bomb.

[Myrmidon]

17 hours ago, Replacement said:

I'd still rather slot one of those in Sprint and be "mostly invisible" than waste a few power picks.

Anyone choosing to use the Stealth/Stealth IO combo doesn’t see it as a waste of a power pick.

[Thezanman]

9 hours ago, ReverendScott said:

Trip Mine and Time Bomb are ignoring both Damage enhancements (damage procs included) and the Sudden Acceleration KB to KD IO. They do the exact same damage with Armageddon/Obliteration as they do unslotted. 

Recharge enhancements seem to lower the recharge though. 

That would certainly explain the much lower damage I was seeing. Good to know.

[Leandro]

9 hours ago, KadillTheFirst said:

Not so much a reason but more just a question: why the change? If it ain't broke why fix it?

This question pops up from time to time for various small changes and in general there is no good answer because no reason was explicitly looked for. For this particular case, the physx libraries needed to be updated in order to support the 64-bit client, and while upgrading all the library calls it was noticed that the simulation parameters were out of whack. They were corrected, Propel objects now behave a lot more solid, commit and move on. From a technical standpoint it was broken, so there was no need to have any other reason "why".

Edited August 12, 2019 by Leandro

[Rathulfr]

19 hours ago, Nanoman said:

Something I've been meaning to suggest, but forgot until now... Would it be possible (and practical!) to replicate the model used by propel?

Currently it's generated randomly clientside, which means everyone sees a different model. Hitting someone in the face with a car, say, is a lot less impressive when, for other members of the group, it's a crate, a shopping cart, a modern art sculpture, etc.

 

/jranger -- For the love of God, man, don't change Propel's client-side randomness!  If you do that, you'll ruin my favorite CoH drinking game!  😭

 

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

Anyone choosing to use the Stealth/Stealth IO combo doesn’t see it as a waste of a power pick.

 

This.  And because of the high endurance cost of Sprint and the tightness of slotting, I usually use Sprint+Stealth IO sparingly.  I usually only use it for ghosting glowie missions or solo play, and even then I turn it off when I start fighting.  Without an additional slot or two for End Redux, Sprint just costs too much to leave on all the time, even with the Stealth IO.

 

[Bossk_Hogg]

I'm really hoping the Devices changes proliferate to Traps. If not, can you explain the rationale?

 

Is anything else in store for this? While the set can do some crazy stuff solo, its team performance is at the low end for a support set IMO. 

[ReverendScott]

In addition to a majority of enhancements not working on Trip Mine/Time Bomb, I think the accuracy needs to be tested as well. It may be ignoring those enhancements too. 

[Bartacus]

1 hour ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

I'm really hoping the Devices changes proliferate to Traps. If not, can you explain the rationale?

 

Is anything else in store for this? While the set can do some crazy stuff solo, its team performance is at the low end for a support set IMO. 

I agree that Time Bomb and Trip Mine need updates in the Traps variant as well. I dont care if its the SAME update, but Time bomb is useless on my traps and honestly trip mine kind of is too.

[Trickshooter]

1 minute ago, ReverendScott said:

Time Bomb has a 360 sec CD, not a "5 second" CD as indicated in the patch notes. Maybe they meant 5 minutes? Either way, something is incorrect. 

Countdown, not cooldown. 5 seconds till it explodes.

[ReverendScott]

1 minute ago, Trickshooter said:

Countdown, not cooldown. 5 seconds till it explodes.

My bad, read that wrong. Thanks. 

[Replacement]

5 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

Anyone choosing to use the Stealth/Stealth IO combo doesn’t see it as a waste of a power pick.

Two power picks, probably.  My point was: no one uses the set outside of theme and perhaps some very particular builds (I feel like Traps folk used to take it a lot for toe-bombing?)  That's enough reason to buff it.

[csr]

Re Stealth Changes:

 

Stealth and Invisibility are now too much alike.  Invisibility is better in every way save E/s and the need to take Stealth or, far more likely now, Grant Invisibility.  Balanced against those the 55' stealth instead of 35', -100% Threat and triple strength suppressing Def seem about right.  So it's not that they're imbalanced, it's just that Stealth seems to be useful only as a set mule or as an option for those who only want to invest one choice in Concealment.

 

One thought is to make Grant Invisibility into "Conceal" (or whatever) and make it function as it does on friendlies and act as a single target Placate on foes.  That makes it a little more interesting choice for those interested in Invisibility.

 

Making stealth toggles non-exclusive with other stealth toggles would make Stealth a more interesting choices for those intending to take more than one power from the Concealment pool.  Though perhaps a slight nerf to Invisibility's Defense would be in order in that case.

 

Also, making Invisibility suppress aggro generating toggles until you are in combat would be a nice QoL addition.

[Captain Powerhouse]

The current goal is for Stealth and Invisibility to be for each other what Combat Jump and Super Jump are for each other.

 

Stealth should be a low end, low magnitude, stealth that grants some evasion and is ideal for combat.

Invisibility is a high end, high magnitude, stealth that grants little to no benefit in combat. Currently it is granting some defense in combat, in a future build, no defense will be granted in combat.

[csr]

5 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

The current goal is for Stealth and Invisibility to be for each other what Combat Jump and Super Jump are for each other.

 

Stealth should be a low end, low magnitude, stealth that grants some evasion and is ideal for combat.

Invisibility is a high end, high magnitude, stealth that grants little to no benefit in combat. Currently it is granting some defense in combat, in a future build, no defense will be granted in combat.

And presumably Superior Invisibility will do both?  Heck, it may even be justified in having a small movement speed buff.

Edited August 13, 2019 by csr
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