Patch Notes for August 26th, 2019 (Release Candidate 3)

[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.

Powers

• Energy Assault: Energy Focus Store/Release should now [finally] work correctly.

• Blaster > Assault Rifle: Removed old bonus damage from Sniper Rifle that was supposed to be removed when Targeting Drone gained a damage buff.

[krj12]

There seems to be an assumption that all AR players go with devices secondary, why the nerf for non devices builds?

 

[XaoGarrent]

41 minutes ago, krj12 said:

There seems to be an assumption that all AR players go with devices secondary, why the nerf for non devices builds?

 

I could be wrong, but I *believe* this was a special bonus that only applied with devices anyway. Now Targeting Drone just gives a large bonus to your first shot universally.

[Leandro]

Correct, that bonus damage was applied only if the kRange_Finder_Mode mode was set on the player, and that mode was only set by Targeting Drone on Self.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Leandro

[Rambolazer]

I'd REALLY like to see Assault Rifle have just a few tweaks and I feel like this would be a perfect time to update...

1) Give Full Auto the same treatment that Rain of Arrows got. Reduce the animation time in half, match the damage, and give it a 16 target cap instead of 10. Add 5 seconds to recharge.

2) Add Aim as a selectable power

3) Make Ignite similar to the sentinel version and turn it into Assault Rifle's version of a tier 3 blast. I would recommend a slight damage buff while boosting its endurance a slight bit. Make it affect a few targets in the area or make it single target. Either way. But the avoidable fear patch it creates is not good.

[lobster]

Energy blast focus functionality issues appear to be dealt with!  (In my non-exhaustion, unprofessional bit of testing...hopefully others will confirm.)

 

• TF is properly triggering focus every use
• I could not get the whirling hands+following attack to double dip focus
• Bone Crusher does not have a bunch of spam
• (and all the text errors are fixed, obviously!)
• One bug that still remains: Damage from the focus bonus still shows up as P10201211 in the chat logs.
• Text issue: damage display in game for the energy powers looks goofy.  I think it's showing the focus damage on everything?  Can that just be hidden?  Whirling hands is showing as doing double the damage of Total Focus, for example.
• Chilling Embrace interaction with sleep is still functioning as expected.
  
  
   

Edited August 27, 2019 by lobster

[Captain Powerhouse]

 

9 hours ago, lobster said:

Text issue: damage display in game for the energy powers looks goofy.  I think it's showing the focus damage on everything?  Can that just be hidden?  Whirling hands is showing as doing double the damage of Total Focus, for example.

Can you provide a screenshot?

[lobster]

I'll check when I get home.  Basically, when you go into the enhancement screen, at level 50 with stock IO sets it was showing say, 800 damage for whirling hands and 480ish for Total Focus (approximate #s).  I think there were ...4 or 6 damage items in the list below, it seemed like a bit much. 

[Captain Powerhouse]

Ah, must be showing the focus bonus for both, PvP and pve 

[TheAdjustor]

15 hours ago, Rambolazer said:

I'd REALLY like to see Assault Rifle have just a few tweaks and I feel like this would be a perfect time to update...

1) Give Full Auto the same treatment that Rain of Arrows got. Reduce the animation time in half, match the damage, and give it a 16 target cap instead of 10. Add 5 seconds to recharge.

2) Add Aim as a selectable power

3) Make Ignite similar to the sentinel version and turn it into Assault Rifle's version of a tier 3 blast. I would recommend a slight damage buff while boosting its endurance a slight bit. Make it affect a few targets in the area or make it single target. Either way. But the avoidable fear patch it creates is not good.

Dude why would you want the lowest damaging nuke in the game, that can't properly benefit from short tick boosts and doesn't even get the the set's secondary effect (extra accuracy), what's more is attached to an overall low damage set ?

 

Archery and Rain of Arrows is a perfect example of how the original devs were really lazy and unprofessional about balance changes and balancing in general.  When the set was built it was obviously designed around having the noncrashing quick recharging nuke and they pre nerfed the whole powerset to balance around that.

 

What's left is a thematic set with low single target damage and a nuke that's hard to get off before everything is dead if you are running with the team.

 

I wouldn't be working on an ice blast build now  if archery had a long range cone that shot bunches of arrows over just 4 seconds took all my buffs and started doing damage from when I hit the button not 5 SECONDS !!! after.

Edited August 27, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Rambolazer]

5 hours ago, TheAdjustor said:

Dude why would you want the lowest damaging nuke in the game, that can't properly benefit from short tick boosts and doesn't even get the the set's secondary effect (extra accuracy), what's more is attached to an overall low damage set ?

 

Archery and Rain of Arrows is a perfect example of how the original devs were really lazy and unprofessional about balance changes and balancing in general.  When the set was built it was obviously designed around having the noncrashing quick recharging nuke and they pre nerfed the whole powerset to balance around that.

 

What's left is a thematic set with low single target damage and a nuke that's hard to get off before everything is dead if you are running with the team.

 

I wouldn't be working on an ice blast build now  if archery had a long range cone that shot bunches of arrows over just 4 seconds took all my buffs and started doing damage from when I hit the button not 5 SECONDS !!! after.

Because of theme honestly. I like the 'natural' builds. And Assault Rifles 'nuke' being weaker on a faster recharge is fine if it wasn't so gimped.

 

But like you're saying, It is definitely weaker than the rest of the blast sets. Which is why I will continue to fight for an Assault Rifle Pass by these developers because so far I've loved all the changes they've made and I'm sure that they would have their own ideas to bring this set up to par. The min/maxer in me STRUGGLES with assault rifle but its the only powerset I want to play! 

[TheAdjustor]

12 hours ago, Rambolazer said:

Because of theme honestly. I like the 'natural' builds. And Assault Rifles 'nuke' being weaker on a faster recharge is fine if it wasn't so gimped.

 

But like you're saying, It is definitely weaker than the rest of the blast sets. Which is why I will continue to fight for an Assault Rifle Pass by these developers because so far I've loved all the changes they've made and I'm sure that they would have their own ideas to bring this set up to par. The min/maxer in me STRUGGLES with assault rifle but its the only powerset I want to play! 

I was saying archery has the weakest nuke in the game. It's a four second cast and things don't take damage from it till a full 5+seconds after you hit the cast and it doesn't fully benefit from short term buffs and putting the new procs in it is just pointless. I haven't tested full auto with targeting drone but I would be willing to bet it gets full benefit of the new first shot out of combat buildup.

 

So when you say get the rain of arrows treatment it's one of two nukes in the game that doesn't get full benefit of short time boosts , the other being blizzard which is arguably the most powerful nuke in the game (one of the 3 highest for base damage, and has 4 secondary effects -to hit, knock down, -speed, -recharge) oh and it because it has lots of ticks you will hit everything.

 

Full Auto could certainly use some love, but don't ask for it to be given the Rain of Arrows treatment.  The would just mean you would get your damage nerfed

 

My guess is that whoever did the nuke rebalancing looked at RoA and FA said they were fine, and didn't bother to consider secondary effects or that fact the sets had them from the beginning and were balanced around having non crashing fast nuke.

 

Edit: Just looking at their history in balancing, you get the feeling the original devs, never bothered to leave notes for themselves or anyone in the future. Something like NB Energy Melee is balanced around Energy Transfer if changes are made please look at changing other powers accordingly.

Edited August 28, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[Captain Powerhouse]

Rain of arrow cast time was cut to 2 seconds a while back, in this server.

[TheAdjustor]

38 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Rain of arrow cast time was cut to 2 seconds a while back, in this server.

That's wonderful to know thank you. I have to see what's going on in the combat logs then

 

2019-08-22 13:04:49 You tap into your inner core with your Upshot and are more deadly for a short while.
2019-08-22 13:04:51 You activated the Rain of Arrows power.
2019-08-22 13:04:52 HIT ! Your Rain of Arrows power is autohit.
2019-08-22 13:04:52  HITS you! Rain of Arrows power was autohit.
2019-08-22 13:04:52 You launch a Rain of Arrows!
2019-08-22 13:04:54 Rain of Arrows:  MISSED Test Dummy!! Your RainofArrows power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.78.

edit: never mind was that recent ? I just got this off test

 

[12:02] You activated the Upshot power.
[12:02] HIT OPERATIVE 99! Your Upshot power is autohit.
[12:02] OPERATIVE 99 HITS you! Upshot power was autohit.
[12:02] You tap into your inner core with your Upshot and are more deadly for a short while.
[12:02] Your attack strength has increased temporarily.
[12:02] You activated the Rain of Arrows power.
[12:02] HIT OPERATIVE 99! Your Rain of Arrows power is autohit.
[12:02] OPERATIVE 99 HITS you! Rain of Arrows power was autohit.
[12:02] You launch a Rain of Arrows!
[12:02] Rain of Arrows: MISSED Test Dummy!! Your RainofArrows power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.36.

edit again that's a nope nope nope.  Took that from the chat window with time stamps turned on, I am an idiot.

 

2019-08-28 12:02:12 You activated the Upshot power.
2019-08-28 12:02:12 HIT OPERATIVE 99! Your Upshot power is autohit.
2019-08-28 12:02:12 OPERATIVE 99 HITS you! Upshot power was autohit.
2019-08-28 12:02:12 You tap into your inner core with your Upshot and are more deadly for a short while.
2019-08-28 12:02:12 Your attack strength has increased temporarily.
2019-08-28 12:02:14 You activated the Rain of Arrows power.
2019-08-28 12:02:16 HIT OPERATIVE 99! Your Rain of Arrows power is autohit.
2019-08-28 12:02:16 OPERATIVE 99 HITS you! Rain of Arrows power was autohit.
2019-08-28 12:02:16 You launch a Rain of Arrows!
2019-08-28 12:02:16 Rain of Arrows:  MISSED Test Dummy!! Your RainofArrows power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.36.

There is the correct log with full time stamps.

Edited August 28, 2019 by TheAdjustor
added information

[JPax]

On 8/26/2019 at 9:02 PM, Leandro said:

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.

Powers

• Energy Assault: Energy Focus Store/Release should now [finally] work correctly.

• Blaster > Assault Rifle: Removed old bonus damage from Sniper Rifle that was supposed to be removed when Targeting Drone gained a damage buff.

If you're going to nerf AR's sniper rifle, can we at least get the standardised instant activation time that every other snipe enjoys? Because you've literally removed the only reason AR's snipe was good from a build standpoint, being that it was a flat chunk of additional damage that responded to +dam buffs and thus broke past it's higher activation time in terms of dps.

[Captain Powerhouse]

That extra damage only worked with Devices to make up for the fact that it didn’t have build up. It never worked with any other set, and only worked if Targeting Drone was active. 

 

Now targeting Drone gives the damage buff directly, regardless what primary you are using.

[Tater Todd]

I didn't know where to ask but how does Energy Focus Store/Release work again?  I used the search function here in the Forums but I didn't see much on it.