issue 26 Patch Notes for August 27th, 2019

[barrier]

3 hours ago, Epsilon Assassin said:

Any reason why Moonbeam was bumped from a .25 second root time to a 1.3 second root time making it feel incredibly funky to use and making it horrible in PvP? Also why is Psy dart using 3 different animations?

Add to that the fact that envenom randomly switches between multiple animations including the one for neurotoxic breath, which is INSANELY LONG and bound to get me killed (I don't need more help dying on a poison, thank you).

[Captain Powerhouse]

3 hours ago, Epsilon Assassin said:

Any reason why Moonbeam was bumped from a .25 second root time to a 1.3 second root time making it feel incredibly funky to use and making it horrible in PvP? Also why is Psy dart using 3 different animations?

Moonbeam was always 1.3 seconds, the fast animation executed weirdly and blast came out almost instantly before due to broken sequencers but it always rooted for 1.3 seconds.

 

Psi dart sounds like a bug.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[barrier]

6 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Moonbeam was always 1.3 seconds, the fast animation executed weirdly and blast came out almost instantly before due to broken sequencers but it always rooted for 1.3 seconds.

 

Psi dart sounds like a bug.

And envenom?

[Captain Powerhouse]

No clue didn’t touch the power, but will look into it.

[quixoteprog]

20 hours ago, Narfu12 said:

I got a question. Once every bug is fixed like game breaking. Would there possibly be custom power sets? 

Dream on my man. Dream on. Not the power sets thing. The bug fixed thing.

Never. Gonna. Happen.

[Epsilon Assassin]

42 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Moonbeam was always 1.3 seconds, the fast animation executed weirdly and blast came out almost instantly before due to broken sequencers but it always rooted for 1.3 seconds.

 

Psi dart sounds like a bug.

It definitely did not. Several things done to the animations with the latest patch broke a lot of things in PvP. Snipes, as a whole are completely mis/differently timed and the Moonbeam epic snipe is has changed to the point of being completely unusable. 

 

To be completely frank, many of the changes to the animations and timings to powers done this patch have had fairly large impacts to the PvP aspect of things, while only mild cosmetic if not no impact on the PvE side of things. Is there a reason the changes were made this way, and is it possible to discuss reverting the most impactful ones (Such as the change to Moonbeam epic), or them in general due to their non-relevance in PvE and their extreme effect on PvP? If the changes were made out of necessity can we get an explanation on what happened exactly?

 

I didn't see the issue being a thing when I first read the patch notes, but the timing and general usability of every character I have with a snipe power has been greatly altered in PvP, to an extreme extent that Moonbeam went from being a good power, to utterly unusable. As in it went from the top of the Patron Pool powers, to the bottom. Even in the more mild cases of its use on Blasters, Snipes simply no longer behave like any other power in the game, as they now have normalized travel time as opposed to the variable travel times of every other projectile in my kit, which more or less hurts any set using travel time snipes for specific burst chains (Psy and Dark Blast are prime examples)

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[Squid Vicious]

On 8/27/2019 at 9:48 AM, Leandro said:

Pools > Concealment > Stealth: No longer slows the user down.

YAY!   

 

I noticed also becoming more VISUALLY invisible after patch.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Squid Vicious

[Cix]

15 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

My bad: I meant to say "couple hundred thousand Inf".

That makes more sense.  😅

[pincheal]

Thanks for the great Update! Cant wait to try it out.

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, Epsilon Assassin said:

To be completely frank, many of the changes to the animations and timings to powers done this patch have had fairly large impacts to the PvP aspect of things, while only mild cosmetic if not no impact on the PvE side of things. Is there a reason the changes were made this way, and is it possible to discuss reverting the most impactful ones (Such as the change to Moonbeam epic), or them in general due to their non-relevance in PvE and their extreme effect on PvP? If the changes were made out of necessity can we get an explanation on what happened exactly?

This was discussed during beta, I explained as best I could here:

 

 

Note: there was no intentional reduction on the snipe projectile speed. If that is something you are experiencing, I can look into to make sure once fired it moves at the same speed as it used to.

 

[Epsilon Assassin]

11 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

This was discussed during beta, I explained as best I could here:

 

 

Note: there was no intentional reduction on the snipe projectile speed. If that is something you are experiencing, I can look into to make sure once fired it moves at the same speed as it used to.

 

This doesnt actually address any of the points I raised.

 

I understand that the sequencers were broken and the power was firing too fast. It always felt a bit weird considering how fast snipes worked on other blasters. However the issue is that every power in the game has an animation time, as well as a root time. The two are distinctly different pieces of the puzzle. For instance, Strangler has activation time of 2.07, but you are not rooted completely in place for all 2 seconds of that animation. Similarly that was true for Moonbeam pre-patch. It had an animation but you were not actively rooted in place, on the ground, unable to issue movement commands, for the entire animation.

 

In this games PvP, movement is incredibly important, if not one of the most important aspects of the game. Having a skill like Moonbeam root you for the entire duration of the animation makes it worthless, while before, it was not. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[Bubbleguts]

7 hours ago, Bubbleguts said:

Not a big fan of the icon change to Scorpion Shield. It now looks like a resistance based shield. The clear minding of Increase Density is ok, I guess, but it does more than remove mez effects...

 

Why were these changed again? Don't remember the patch notes saying anything about icon changes.

 

 

No one else notice this? Not bothering anyone else that a Defensive power Like Scorpion's Shield (Smash/Lethal/Energy) has a damage RESISTANCE icon similar to Dark Armor?

 

It was an icon similar to the icon for Poisonous Ray that shows it's a Defensive shield.

 

 

 

Scorpion Shield Edit

Black Scorpion's technologies are impressive indeed. This energy shield grants you Defense to Lethal, Smashing and Energy attacks, as well as improves your Damage Resistance to Toxic damage.

Recharge	Fast
Minimum Level	41 (Corruptor)
	41 (Dominator)
	41 (Mastermind)
Effects	Toggle: Self +Defense (Smashing, Lethal, Energy), +Resistance (Toxic)
Enhancements	Enhance Defense Buff
	Reduce Endurance Cost
	Increase Attack Rate
Set Categories	Defense

[subbacultchas]

30 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

This was discussed during beta, I explained as best I could here:

 

 

Note: there was no intentional reduction on the snipe projectile speed. If that is something you are experiencing, I can look into to make sure once fired it moves at the same speed as it used to.

 

Thank you for this. I have a friend who was saying that his snipe was broken and now had a huge cast time, and I couldn't figure out what he was seeing. I'll relay this along the pipeline.

[Captain Powerhouse]

18 minutes ago, Epsilon Assassin said:

I understand that the sequencers were broken and the power was firing too fast. It always felt a bit weird considering how fast snipes worked on other blasters. However the issue is that every power in the game has an animation time, as well as a root time. The two are distinctly different pieces of the puzzle. For instance, Strangler has activation time of 2.07, but you are not rooted completely in place for all 2 seconds of that animation. Similarly that was true for Moonbeam pre-patch. It had an animation but you were not actively rooted in place, on the ground, unable to issue movement commands, for the entire animation.

I see what you mean more clearly now. 

 

I am looking at the old snipe sequencer declaration, though.

 

Frames 1 - 40 are played without the cantmove flag, then frames 40 to 60 (these are always inclusive btw) are played on a loop for however long the interrupt window may be, also without a cantmove flag.

 

The actual attack executes frames 62 to 100 of the snipe at normal speed, all of it with the CANTMOVE flag.

 

Note that the slow snipes were not touched at all during this patch, only the quick versions were altered (and not altered, new sequencer definitions were made for these.)

 

 

[Epsilon Assassin]

2 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

I see what you mean more clearly now. 

 

I am looking at the old snipe sequencer declaration, though.

 

Frames 1 - 40 are played without the cantmove flag, then frames 40 to 60 (these are always inclusive btw) are played on a loop for however long the interrupt window may be, also without a cantmove flag.

 

The actual attack executes frames 62 to 100 of the snipe at normal speed, all of it with the CANTMOVE flag.

 

Note that the slow snipes were not touched at all during this patch, only the quick versions were altered (and not altered, new sequencer definitions were made for these.)

 

 

So 38% of the previous 1.3 second animation was CANTMOVE, but now 100% of the current 1.3 second animation is CANTMOVE. That would be the problem I am describing, and it's quite problematic. Is it fixable, or something that can change, or should I just consign the skill to the ash heap of unusable pvp history?

[Captain Powerhouse]

The old version of the fast snipe always played only frames 62 to 100, at normal speed, that's a total of 1.3 seconds rooted.

The new version of the fast snipe plays frames 1-100 at an accelerated speed to make sure it only takes 1.3 seconds to do the whole sequence.

 

As far as root time goes, there should had not been any change.

 

The biggest effective difference is that the blast goes off at frame 17 when it used to go off at frame zero.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[Epsilon Assassin]

5 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

The old version of the fast snipe always played only frames 62 to 100, at normal speed, that's a total of 1.3 seconds rooted.

The new version of the fast snipe plays frames 1-100 at an accelerated speed to make sure it only takes 1.3 seconds to do the whole sequence.

 

As far as root time goes, there should had not been any change.

 

The biggest effective difference is that the blast goes off at frame 17 when it used to go off at frame zero.

Then it's not the problem and there's something entirely different. There was definitely not 1.3 seconds of root time until this patch on the epic Moonbeam using it in the actual game.  

 

It's sounding more and more like this was a bug fix as opposed to an intentional nerf and that the snipe never should have been usable if not for its bugged iteration. <If that's so, I can't see it ever being usable. Not the answer I was looking for, but an answer none the less.

 

As a follow up question, why was the change to 1.3 seconds universal necessary? Just for normalization? Curious as to why. It's caused a lot of problems with sets in pvp and it's made me curious. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[HelenCarnate]

9 minutes ago, Epsilon Assassin said:

So 38% of the previous 1.3 second animation was CANTMOVE, but now 100% of the current 1.3 second animation is CANTMOVE. That would be the problem I am describing, and it's quite problematic. Is it fixable, or something that can change, or should I just consign the skill to the ash heap of unusable pvp history?

It sounds like it wasn't rooting during the 62-100 frames as it should have been and now it's fixed to match other snipes 

[Epsilon Assassin]

1 minute ago, HelenCarnate said:

It sounds like it wasn't rooting during the 62-100 frames as it should have been and now it's fixed to match other snipes 

Yep, I already noted that above. 

[Captain Powerhouse]

For what it's worth: sequencers that are not triggered correctly (as is the case by just hard-skippiing the interrupt segment with the unfinished quicksnipe implementation) can be subject to odd bugs like the CANTMOVE flag sporadically not triggering. Sometimes the whole animation wont play. It's a big issue with No Redraw themes.

[Epsilon Assassin]

6 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

For what it's worth: sequencers that are not triggered correctly (as is the case by just hard-skippiing the interrupt segment with the unfinished quicksnipe implementation) can be subject to odd bugs like the CANTMOVE flag sporadically not triggering. Sometimes the whole animation wont play. It's a big issue with No Redraw themes.

Previously there was definitely cantmove involved, but it was very consistent. You'd have what felt like a quarter second of cantmove, and around a second of animation. Though it being bugged entirely and that's what made it usable seems to be the issue here.  Even though the impact it has on blaster snipes has more or less hurt snipes effectiveness in burst combos as the projectiles seem to obey fundamentally different rules then other projectiles, I was curious as to whether or not there were bugs involved with the changes as a whole. 

 

Personally a lot of the changes seem to have just brought a lot of problems on my end with next to no upsides, but that is the nature of changes. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[Epsilon Assassin]

9 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

For what it's worth: sequencers that are not triggered correctly (as is the case by just hard-skippiing the interrupt segment with the unfinished quicksnipe implementation) can be subject to odd bugs like the CANTMOVE flag sporadically not triggering. Sometimes the whole animation wont play. It's a big issue with No Redraw themes.

On a follow up note. Can I ask what changed about Psionic Lance? The power definitely changed. Animation or projectile speed wise. Measurably so. Is that a bug or an unmentioned change for the patch?

 

If it is an unintended change that can't be fixed, would it be possible to tweak the power's projectile speed to compensate for potential animation time increases to preserve Psy Blasts inherent timing/pace?

 

Psy Blasts major strength was how its timings overlapped to land huge "Spikes" of burst damage, which is integral to the sets performance in PvP. It would be very appreciated if that strength could be preserved. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[Captain Powerhouse]

That one was intentionally changed to have a longer 1.33 second cast time from it's former version. It's sequencer was the most broken. It had a known impact on performance.

[Epsilon Assassin]

10 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

That one was intentionally changed to have a longer 1.33 second cast time from it's former version. It's sequencer was the most broken. It had a known impact on performance.

That makes sense, I thought it felt a lot slower. It completely broke the char->lance or lance->TK timings for PvP. I tried for an hour or so this morning to find something to fill Lance's timing in the Psy attack chain but nothing really does until ~140 units in range. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Epsilon Assassin

[jsmitty5]

I'm a mac user. I ran the update but now I cannot access the game. I can launch in safe mode but it gets stuck on the loading screen for a zone. It worked prior to today. Is there something else mac users need to do?