Patch Notes for August 23rd, 2019 (Release Candidate 1)

[Leandro]

General

• This is a Release Candidate. It means that we expect this patch to go to the live servers, unless we find a severe issue that blocks its release. Because this patch contains data files as they would go to the Live servers, several Justin features like all the Merit recipes being free and a bunch of badges being awarded at character creation are disabled. They will come back once we start the next round of experimental patches.

• Unless otherwise noted, this patch includes all the changes from August 11th and August 17th.

Powers

• Dark Assault

  • Night Fall : Increased Recharge fro 10 seconds to 14 seconds. Damage from scale 0.11 per tick to 0.1459 per tick.

• Earth Assault:

  • Mud Pots: damage lowered from scale 0.18 per tick to 0.13 per tick, counter adjustment for area increase that should had been in the previous patch.

  • Heavy Mallet recharge increased from 14 to 15 seconds. Scale from 2.6 to 2.76.

• Electricity Assault:

  • Thunder Strike: Increased energy damage inflicted against secondary targets.

• Energy Assault:

  • New special mechanic. Most single target attacks have a 20% chance of granting Energy Focus mode. Hitting a foe with Total Focus will always grant Energy Focus mode.
  • While in this mode, Whirling Hands will inflict a large amount of bonus damage. Power Burst will do some bonus damage. The mode will be removed if a power with bonus is used.
  • Bone Smasher now adds a weakening debuff when used under Energy Focus mode.
  • Increased the Energy Focus damage from Power Burst

• Icy Assault:

  • Chilling Embrace: now does a small amount of cold damage every 2 seconds.

  • Ice Slash recharge lowered from 20 to 17 seconds, damage scale lowered from 3.56 to 3.08

• Martial Assault

  • Trick Shot Radius increased to 20 and target cap changed to 5 (same as it used to be.) Damage lowered from scale 1.4 to scale 1.1

  • Dragon's Tail: Recharge reduced from 20 seconds to 16. Damage scale from 1.1 to 0.8985.

• Thorny Assault:

  • Flling Thorns: Lowered recharge to 10 seconds. Scale to 0.774 lethal damage. and 0.086 toxic damage over time.

• Psionic Assault:

  • Telekinetic Thrust: Recharge lowered from 8 seconds to 7 seconds. Damage lowerd from 95.8 to 86.4.

• Burn changes rolled back  for further testing and development:

  • Burn should again continue to spawn multiple flame patches.

  • Burn should again ignore accuracy enhancements.

Bug Fixes

• The contact "Max" in Dark Astoria will no longer be stuck unable to give you any missions if you finished his arc using Ouroboros before running Dark Astoria normally. He should always, at the very least, offer the mission that introduces Praetor Duncan.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Leandro

[Caulderone]

Does the change to Chilling Embrace allow it to take damage IO sets now?  How about Dominator AT sets?

Edited August 24, 2019 by Caulderone

[nihilii]

I would like to understand the lowered recharge changes. Given that doms have two clicky primaries, they're bound by animation time. So higher recharge is almost always better, and lower recharge is almost always a nerf.

But is there a consensus on this? Or is it just me thinking it?

 

Basically, I'm curious to know if this patch's recharge changes were intended to scale back from previous tweaks deemed too powerful, or if the recharge changes are actually meant as an improvement.

[lobster]

Well crap, now I need to set up an energy dom over there and test the new energy stuff 🙂.  It sounds interesting at first glance, but also like a pretty big change to be added this close to going live.

 

The addition of damage to chilling embrace should indeed make it able to take pbaoe damage sets like all the other toggles.  However,  I don't think it needed damage.  It's fine with it...but being able to use it around sleeping targets was an interesting side effect/bonus of the set.  With damage, it won't be quite as good a pairing with that limited subset of playstyles (primarily elec using Static Field, but mind to a lesser extent..and maybe people take the sleep in plant??).

 

Quote

Basically, I'm curious to know if this patch's recharge changes were intended to scale back from previous tweaks deemed too powerful, or if the recharge changes are actually meant as an improvement.

 

Without them saying, hard to guess at intent.  It sounds like they want the MA attacks to be just plain fast, which means less damage to keep them balanced.

I'm not sure why the change to Fling Thorns.  It sounds like they have some goals for the sets that we aren't aware of, and making that faster was part of that?

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, lobster said:

The addition of damage to chilling embrace should indeed make it able to take pbaoe damage sets like all the other toggles.  However,  I don't think it needed damage.  It's fine with it...but being able to use it around sleeping targets was an interesting side effect/bonus of the set.  With damage, it won't be quite as good a pairing with that limited subset of playstyles (primarily elec using Static Field, but mind to a lesser extent..and maybe people take the sleep in plant??).

Yeah this. I have an elec/ice that I was very excited to play with the changes to ice but adding damage to chilling embrace will hurt the combo a bit.

 

The trick with elec is to try to control when you do damage and break the sleep (while the enemy still has end). So standing in the sleeping pack, knocking them down with jolting chain, then firing off ice sword circle and chain fences while they are getting up is my standard rotation. They are often asleep again before they can retaliate. Ice's lack of dot coupled with the extra debuff aura made it an ideal pairing for elec.

 

If chilling embrace needed more buffing (and i was thrilled with the changes as they were) could it just have the -dam raised? If ice as a whole needs more aoe dam then could a little be added to ice sword circle instead?

[lobster]

1 minute ago, parabola said:

Yeah this. I have an elec/ice that I was very excited to play with the changes to ice but adding damage to chilling embrace will hurt the combo a bit.

 

The trick with elec is to try to control when you do damage and break the sleep (while the enemy still has end). So standing in the sleeping pack, knocking them down with jolting chain, then firing off ice sword circle and chain fences while they are getting up is my standard rotation. They are often asleep again before they can retaliate. Ice's lack of dot coupled with the extra debuff aura made it an ideal pairing for elec.

 

If chilling embrace needed more buffing (and i was thrilled with the changes as they were) could it just have the -dam raised? If ice as a whole needs more aoe dam then could a little be added to ice sword circle instead?

 I would support this over damage on it.  If it needs more buffs beyond the aoe size, I prefer increasing debuffs to adding damage.

 

One of my main doms on live was ice/elec - it's a great combo for the reasons you mention!

[Parabola]

1 minute ago, lobster said:

 I would support this over damage on it.  If it needs more buffs beyond the aoe size, I prefer increasing debuffs to adding damage.

 

One of my main doms on live was ice/elec - it's a great combo for the reasons you mention!

Thinking way outside the box it might be fun to replace the damage with a minor -def effect. Then allow it to take def debuff and acc def debuff sets. That would give access to three procs allowing it to be slotted into becoming a minor damage aura (on a long tick admittedly) if that's what the player wanted out of the power.

 

Thinking about it lobster, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't you posting about that combo that inspired me to roll one. I'd never played a dominator and I trawled the boards looking for something interesting and different to roll up for my first one. Somebody sold the synergy between these sets well and it might have been you!

[lobster]

18 minutes ago, parabola said:

Thinking way outside the box it might be fun to replace the damage with a minor -def effect. Then allow it to take def debuff and acc def debuff sets. That would give access to three procs allowing it to be slotted into becoming a minor damage aura (on a long tick admittedly) if that's what the player wanted out of the power.

 

I'd be fine with either of those!  I like it much better as a debuff than a damage power.  -fly or a chance to immobilize or sleep or other stuff that goes along with the slow/ice mechanic, any of that would be fine as well!.

 

18 minutes ago, parabola said:

Thinking about it lobster, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't you posting about that combo that inspired me to roll one. I'd never played a dominator and I trawled the boards looking for something interesting and different to roll up for my first one. Somebody sold the synergy between these sets well and it might have been you!

That would be pretty cool if it was me.  I know I've talked up how much fun elec/icy was a few times 🙂  I enjoyed that playstyle and will probably re-make him someday after I get through all these new ones...

 

----

Energy Assault : I just put in a bit of time putting together a mind/energy dom (something I've never played before) on Justin and, while I can't speak to the numeric balance of the energy changes without sitting down, I can say that the the new mechanic did feel FUN (and I didn't notice anything buggy).  It gave me something else to think about while playing (which attack to use to capitalize on the buff) and made me heavily prioritize using total focus to trigger the reliable buff. 

 

[Captain Powerhouse]

Previous cast time thorn changes were a bit too good, and had the set powers too lopsided. These changes were meant to distribute damage across the set, tone down dps just a bit, but more than anything have no “this is the obvious skippable powers” situation. Was easier to achieve in this set than others.

 

in my tests, ice was still not doing well enough on the AoE front. Buffing the cone recharge was just not doing the trick, and didn’t want to load even more damage on the pbaoe, so decided to give a tad of damage to chilling embrace, that for the set to the desired point. May look for some option to make it not hurt sleeping foes.

 

Martial was doing way too much aoe damage, and at the same time not kicking fast enough, so that helped address two issues at once.

[Caulderone]

5 hours ago, parabola said:

Thinking way outside the box it might be fun to replace the damage with a minor -def effect. Then allow it to take def debuff and acc def debuff sets. That would give access to three procs allowing it to be slotted into becoming a minor damage aura (on a long tick admittedly) if that's what the player wanted out of the power.

 

4 hours ago, lobster said:

I'd be fine with either of those!  I like it much better as a debuff than a damage power.  -fly or a chance to immobilize or sleep or other stuff that goes along with the slow/ice mechanic, any of that would be fine as well!.

 

I hadn't even thought about the Damage and Sleep issue.  That does seem to indicate a need for something besides damage, unless the damage can be set to ignore sleeping targets.

 

Keeping with things that Ice already has, there are a few possibilities I see.  Arctic Air has confuse and Bitter Ice Blast has ToHitDebuff and Ice Slick has KD and Flash Freeze has Sleep.

 

Another possibility would be to give it a buff, similar to Envenomed Blades, that adds the minor cold damage to your attacks instead of doing the damage directly itself.  This buff could be set to ignore enhancements, like Envenomed Blades is now,  and make it easy to control the damage added.

 

Another possibility would be to give it a personal speed buff based on the speed drained from enemies.  Not sure this has merit, but it occurred to me.

[Caulderone]

10 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

in my tests, ice was still not doing well enough on the AoE front. Buffing the cone recharge was just not doing the trick, and didn’t want to load even more damage on the pbaoe, so decided to give a tad of damage to chilling embrace, that for the set to the desired point. May look for some option to make it not hurt sleeping foes.

 

Either not hitting sleeping foes or the Envenomed Blades type buff would seem good possibilities, then.

[Vanden]

24 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

in my tests, ice was still not doing well enough on the AoE front. Buffing the cone recharge was just not doing the trick, and didn’t want to load even more damage on the pbaoe, so decided to give a tad of damage to chilling embrace, that for the set to the desired point. May look for some option to make it not hurt sleeping foes.

If you could find a way to make it not hurt sleeping foes, that'd be a great thing to add to the Interface powers (after addressing the bug that makes them suck), because the added DoT makes certain powers like Mesmerize and Flash Freeze useless.

[Captain Powerhouse]

That’s easy to do, but not sure how many would agree with sleep powers suddenly suppressing their Interface damage.

[Vanden]

It might not be the best for powers like Charged Brawl or Ice Melee's Frozen Aura, where they're actual attacks with a sleep side effect, but moves like Mesmerize and Flash Freeze are rendered useless by interface DoTs.

[csr]

14 hours ago, Leandro said:

Powers

• Energy Assault:

  • New special mechanic. Most single target attacks have a 20% chance of granting Energy Focus mode. Hitting a foe with Total Focus will always grant Energy Focus mode.
  • While in this mode, Whirling Hands will inflict a large amount of bonus damage. Power Burst will do some bonus damage. The mode will be removed if a power with bonus is used.
  • Bone Smasher now adds a weakening debuff when used under Energy Focus mode.
  • Increased the Energy Focus damage from Power Burst

With Bone Smasher I get a bunch of spam, apparently one brilliant red message for each debuff applied to the target.  The debuff effect also seems to apply if I've queued BS while Whirling Hands is animating.

[lobster]

14 hours ago, Caulderone said:

 

Either not hitting sleeping foes or the Envenomed Blades type buff would seem good possibilities, then.

What about an Envenomed Blades style buff that is based on the number of targets in range of the aura?  This would put the damage load onto the aura without breaking sleep ,etc.  5% cold damage per target up to a max of 40% or something? 

 

Quote

With Bone Smasher I get a bunch of spam, apparently one brilliant red message for each debuff applied to the target.  The debuff effect also seems to apply if I've queued BS while Whirling Hands is animating.

Confirmed.  Also happens with Power Burst triggered during Whirling Hands.  However, sometimes the rings would go away then pop back up, and I couldn't do it 100% of the time, so maybe it was Whirling Hands re-triggering the buff? [edit: To be clear, the double dipping into the buff is what I was able to repeat with Power Burst, only Bone Smasher seems to have the extra text spam).  Edit 2: I can't seem to trigger Energy Focus from WH, so that doesn't seem to be the issue.  I have been able to get to Focus hits in a row in multiple ways.  In addition to queuing BS after Whirling, BS can also be queued after Power Burst, although this seems to be more sensitive than when doing it after Whirling.  Maybe some time of brief time out needs to be added between Focus being able to proc its bonus damage?

 

edit 3: It seems like Energy Focus can trigger off of misses too (on Power Blast at least), I was able to trigger it once after stunning someone with Whirling Hands, then missing a Power Blast.  The wording of the power does not say "HIT", but it seems like it should require a hit?

 

edit 4: What I *may* be seeing is Bone Smasher, when used in focus mode, itself triggering focus mode again vs. a disoriented target, then expending that focus.    Trying to figure out how to sort out log windows to figure it out.  That being said, it seems to happen much more often than that would.

 

edit5: The combat logs show "P10201211" instead of showing the new proc damage when it goes off.

Note : For testing purposes it would be super handy if we had a "rez at full life" (does this already exist and I just don't know?  I'm not super familiar with the temp powers) temp power - lots of running back from the hospital to my mission to test power interactions :P.

Edited August 25, 2019 by lobster

[Thezanman]

If it's necessary to nerf Telekinetic Thrust after lowering its cast time, I'd rather the cast time go back up a little bit instead of lowering the damage.