FC.31.20150819.2/.3/.4 - Supervillain Onslaught

ladygadfly

Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.4:
This build is available on PTS now, 8/25/2015.

Supervillain Onslaught
- Added "Endbringer's Grasp" power unlock to the PTS store.
- Reduced magnitude of powers on UNTIL Defender units at Onslaught Target sites.
- Added villain player power unlocks to villain store.

September Subscriber Bonus
- Added new September Gold Subscriber emote rewards, "DeathReach01" and "DeathReach02", to PTS & Gold Subscriber stores.

Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.3:
This build is available on PTS now, 8/24/2015.
- Added a new icon for the Circus Malvanum Event.
- Added Villain & Guardian token boxes to the PTS store.
- Swallowtail Cut no longer obliterates Onslaught Villains.
- Added audio to several of Grond's powers.
- Added the following player powers: Gravitic Ripple, Nuclear Shockwave, Lance Rain
These new powers will be purchasable with villain tokens in the Onslaught store, but are not yet ready for testing. They will be available for testing, along with Endbringer's Grasp, later this week. (*EDIT Available as of 8/25/2015)

We are currently still parsing through all of your feedback and making iterations accordingly. We expect to have those iterations to you early next week if not sooner.

Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.2:
This build is available on PTS now, 8/19/2015.

Supervillain Onslaught Feature
- We're starting a Play-with-the-devs event right now. The devs will be the villains for an hour, while everyone else can join in by attacking them.
- After the event, we'll enable the rest of the feature on PTS so players can try out being the villain, look at the Onslaught store as well as check out the various Until Checkpoints. **EDIT The Supervillain Onslaught Store is now available and Onslaught NPCs will appear in-game.
- Read about it here: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/335/feature/10007/Champions-Online-Get-Ready-to-Unleash-Your-Inner-Villain.html
- Remember, much this feature is still being iterated on. Your feedback is certainly welcome!

Endbringer's Grasp Ultimate Power
- Will appear in the powers list but is not yet ready for testing. (*EDIT Available as of 8/25/2015)

**EDIT Other Patchnotes
- Pressing 'esc' will close Event Details, Calendar, Welcome Page, Journal windows.
- Intelligence: Cooldown Reduction granted by Intelligence has been drastically reduced.
- Cooldown Reduction Rating: Cooldown Reduction granted by Cooldown Reduction rating has been drastically reduced.
- Telepathy: Psi Lash: Should now start up much faster and activate more consistently.
- Power Armor: Wrist Bolter: Should now start up much faster and activate more consistently.

Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens


Please stay on topic in this PTS thread. We use bug reports from this thread to decide whether a PTS build is ready to go live, and so we need to make sure we're seeing everything in it. Please do discuss the changes, but if you find yourself writing about something that isn't specific to what's on PTS, then that should probably go here: LIVE Bug Reports

These player & moderator maintained threads are checked weekly by developers:
- Power Bugs
- Alerts Issues
- Costume Bugs
- Other Issues & QOL Concerns

xcaligax

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! *Haymakers a wall*

xcaligax

Double post****

Feedback: The overall feel and gameplay of the content feels very nice. It felt very competitive and fun.

Suggested changes:

In it's current state, villain attacks don't meet up to par with the amount of damage they can endure. Increasing their damage output would make them more threatening to players, who at this point, even the most squishy builds can tank gravitar in the alert. This is a fine balance to make, and over shooting it slightly can upset that balance. Please, if you take this suggestion, carefully consider this.

The villains seem too susceptible to crowd control effects. My suggestion is to either give them resistances, or ignore CCs from players all together, with the exception of nailed to the ground, and other travel power cancelling effects.

Some of the villain powers, most notably the aoe effects of Medusa and Gravitar, seem vastly too large and too long in length for their effects. Toning this down could do some good, for balance purposes.

In general, I want to feel like I am fighting a boss, not a player.

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xrazamax

gradii wrote: »

xcaligax wrote: »

The villains seem too susceptible to crowd control effects. My suggestion is to either give them resistances, or ignore CCs from players all together, with the exception of nailed to the ground, and other travel power cancelling effects.

No, I think with the exception of grond, at least most crowd control effects should work. Up the damage they can do, but don't make players who run crowd control builds feel useless, we have enough of that already.

Suggestion: Allow players to toggle themselves as flagged, or unflagged for Onslaught mode,
allowing players to choose whether they
participate/can attack or take damage from Onslaught villains with the click of a option button.

I have to agree with Gradii here. CC players should not feel shafted because they cannot utilize their CC. If any villain should be immune to CC, it should be Medusa maybe. I do agree that the villains need a tiny bit of a buff in damage, especially in their AoE attacks. It is nice I never felt like I was getting one shotted, but too many players had full health bars for most of the fight.


And it probably goes without saying that swallowtail cut needs to be addressed as it damages the villains a ridiculous amount.

theravenforce

Can we have an explanation on the following please:

- The global Cooldowns adjustment. Just specifics on what it has affected and by how much.


EDIT: Yeah, don't sideline crowd control players, if you are going to make sure I cannot participate in this event at least give me a CC pass to make my secondary debuffs worthwhile.

As for the bosses...from the brief experience I had playing as one...I feel as if they need Cosmic or Legendary classification and some of the associated protections.

Also targeting players should be easier, I had a lot of difficulty targeting the ones who showed up and I was mostly able to target pets.

crypticbuxom

The villains need a way to take down players or at least find a way to keep them off. Maybe they can have an ability to stop the self heals the target has forcing the need of healers.

(I'll come up with more thoughts on how to make the villain be able to take on all the heroes.)​​

ladygadfly

We've enabled the Supervillain Onslaught store now, so you can head over a claim a villain device once/day on level 10+ characters.

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mrhinkypunk

Onslaught Gloves of the Saviour have the same power passive as Gloves of the Defender.
From the onslaught agent.

aiqa

I need to play around with the villains more to form my opinion.
So far playing a melee character seemed a little tricky, the devs were not using movement a lot but when Smackwell turned into Gravitar he was quite tricky to even hit with a melee build. Also knocks should probably not work on them.

The other change on PTS I do think might be a little excessive. The effectiveness of CDR has been nerfed for more than 50%, and while it was overperforming a bit this seems a bit to much to me. And even now CDR is effective for the AD and AO shared cooldown, it looks like CDR has been nerfed specifically to stop AD/AO cycling but in my opinion just having the shared cooldown unaffected by CDR and a smaller nerf to CDR would be much better.

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xrazamax

aiqa wrote: »

The other change on PTS I do think might be a little excessive. The effectiveness of CDR has been nerfed for more than 50%, and while it was overperforming a bit this seems a bit to much to me. And even now CDR is effective for the AD and AO shared cooldown, it looks like CDR has been nerfed specifically to stop AD/AO cycling but in my opinion just having the shared cooldown unaffected by CDR and a smaller nerf to CDR would be much better.

I completely agree. I like what the CDR is doing in terms of AD/AO cycling, but I don't like what it is doing to every other power with a CD. It feels a tad excessive.

theravenforce

xrazamax wrote: »

aiqa wrote: »

The other change on PTS I do think might be a little excessive. The effectiveness of CDR has been nerfed for more than 50%, and while it was overperforming a bit this seems a bit to much to me. And even now CDR is effective for the AD and AO shared cooldown, it looks like CDR has been nerfed specifically to stop AD/AO cycling but in my opinion just having the shared cooldown unaffected by CDR and a smaller nerf to CDR would be much better.

I completely agree. I like what the CDR is doing in terms of AD/AO cycling, but I don't like what it is doing to every other power with a CD. It feels a tad excessive.

Incredibly excessive. The CDR AD cycling issue could have been fixed by applying a 30 second flat shared CD to AD's and AO's IMO

crypticbuxom

So how as a villain are you supposed to take out the targets? You need three but the Until Defender's just wrecks you. Are you supposed to let heroes gang up on you get increase your damage and resistance?

What about players healing the Until Defenders? How are you supposed to take them down when you can't break through players healing and shielding them?

Defeating an Until Defender only grants 5 tokens. The rates are ridiculous.

The extra tokens don't seem to work. are you only allowed to play one run per day per character? So you need to farm 15000 villain tokens to get a full set and only get one shot a day?


Putting these things in easy to reach locations for low levels are going to make the game seem incredibly dangerous and unfun if they encounter this thing. Put them in more serious locations where the players who have leveled up in the game and discover safe and danger zones have learned to be catious.​​

crypticbuxom

As for powers effecting and other combat related stuff.

You don't get out of combat healing. Ego Sleep puts you to sleep no matter what. Someone using stealth is impossible to fight against.​​

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thebuckeye

Also, Grond should be starting with at least 20 Fury instead of Nil

championshewolf

BUG

The Onslaught devices are counting down in the reward screen. Though this seems to not be affecting the actual device timer any as just refreshing the reward screen will reset the timers, it can and probably will cause a panic for the first few days.

Certain leap moves will make Grond invisible unless you look up. This bug has been persistent since Grond's implementation and needs to be fixed.

The device counts down in the back pack without ever being used. This is kind of silly as I was planning to test this later because I was taking care of other responsibilities. But as of this moment the device in my pack has less than a minute on it meaning I can't do any testing. Make them unique so people can't horde them if that's, otherwise the timer should not start until they are used.

Evidently just standing around, and not even being in combat, is enough to earn these villain tokens. I am just watching some of the super villain fights going on and so far I think I have earned about 50 or so villain tokens without having really done anything but just be there to watch.

Gloves of the Bastion and Saviour have the exact same bonus on them, bonus threat and shield.

FEEDBACK

Currently underwhelming. These boss fights are currently just massive bags of hit points. More than a few times I've sat there and watched multiple people, even while I am writing this feedback, target me, and after a few hits give up and focus someone else because my healthbar barely moves based on the damage they do as super villains. And I wasn't even blocking. The most annoying thing I had to deal with with all three villains was Gravitar's gravity thing that keeps magnetizing you to a certain spot.

This is an observation without having used a device yet. I will give feedback on that.

As far as my observation on the gear... it's the exact same as Justice Gear. All the stats and set bonuses are the same, at least that's how it appears on my screen, which now makes the Rampages completely pointless as this gear is now leaps and bound easier to get than the random chance rampage tokens you need multiple weeks to earn in spades (outside people running alt farms). And let's not forget that Justice Gear cost people real money to get. Remember it cost Drifter salvage to make those pieces. And regardless of your thinking someone, somewhere had to drop the money to get that even if you did buy crates.

Another issue is there seems to be no way to identify yourself as flagged for Onslaught. There needs to be an icon or name highlight or something because currently I can't tell if I am flagged or not when I have disengaged for the past 5 minutes.​​

draogn

I can see problems with how villian tokens are earned, if no one attacks you or someones super build kills you before you are able to attack (or whatever) then you won't earn anything. Perhaps adding some kind of minor objectives like destroy x number objects or something. Even if the amount of tokens award is somehow reduced that would atleast be something.

biffsmackwell

draogn wrote: »

I can see problems with how villian tokens are earned, if no one attacks you or someones super build kills you before you are able to attack (or whatever) then you won't earn anything. Perhaps adding some kind of minor objectives like destroy x number objects or something. Even if the amount of tokens award is somehow reduced that would atleast be something.

One guy with a "super build" won't take you out before you can attack anything. The villains can take quite a bit of punishment.​​

riverocean

overall I felt my onslaught villains were much to weak and vulnerable. Some of that could be unfamiliarity with their powers and how to effectively use them. I also had a few players in vehicles come at me - I didn't bother to look at my log (I know I should've of) but it felt like vehicles were hitting me very hard.

- Energy building was a problem. It looks like energy being built is based on being attacked by players instead of the normal energy builder.

- Onslaught Villains should have some resistance to CC. That doesn't mean they should ignore CC all together but maybe resist enough to shorten the duration. Kind of like Super Villains do now.

- Knocback was another big issue for me. At one point my villain was being bounced all over the map. Give them KB protection please.

Overall, this was a fun event. I enjoyed myself. I am worried that balance is going to be a problem, as right now Super Villains feel a little to weak. But if they are over-buffed, then you have the opposite problem.

kaiserin

Initial thoughts:

Villains need to be Crowd Control and Interrupt immune. A lot of them have long charge attacks that are just fodder for cc/interrupts. It's not fun getting constantly interrupted.

Villains need a way to break or reduce blocking, at least temporarily.

Overall Villain damage seems too low.




Going to test out the individual villains a bit more for a better review on what to do with them.​​

draogn

biffsmackwell wrote: »

draogn wrote: »

I can see problems with how villian tokens are earned, if no one attacks you or someones super build kills you before you are able to attack (or whatever) then you won't earn anything. Perhaps adding some kind of minor objectives like destroy x number objects or something. Even if the amount of tokens award is somehow reduced that would atleast be something.

One guy with a "super build" won't take you out before you can attack anything. The villains can take quite a bit of punishment.​​

From the complaints in zone it seems there are certain powers that cut right through the supervillians defenses. A lot of those players with super builds also like to travel in packs.

On a side note, might want to keep an eye on Gravitars abilities and the lag they may produce. Especially if you get more then one in an area.

kaiserin

Thoughts on cooldown reduction: I'm still mulling over this change. At first glance it seems like a lot, but the reality is cooldown reduction was doing *way* too much. With no investment in int I had characters bringing AO's/AD's down to 40 seconds. That's a little over 50% in cd reduction with just mods and gear. That's insane. Now with heavy mod and int investment you're looking at around a 30% decrease in cooldowns, which is still very good.​​

biffsmackwell

I found the damage I took was pretty decent on a pretty average build. You could really tell who had great builds and who didn't, because some guys you just blow up in three shots, others just wouldn't die.

I do agree that they should have better hold immunity. Not sure how it all stacks, but I've seen villains getting shut down a lot.​​

biffsmackwell

draogn wrote: »

From the complaints in zone it seems there are certain powers that cut right through the supervillians defenses. A lot of those players with super builds also like to travel in packs.

Yeah, someone leaked an exploit. It's being fixed​​

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biffsmackwell

The MCPD bots should do the same amount of damage they do now. They're trying to keep Renaissance Center clean, and that's good. But the Defender bots defending the Onslaught Targets, they're doing the same type of damage, and can take you out before you even take the target out. They need to be a nuisance, not a total deterrent.

As far as knocks go, I wouldn't say get rid of them completely. Maybe Grond should start with a stack or two of resist, but taking it out completely ruins some of the fun.​​

pantagruel01

kaizerin wrote: »

Initial thoughts:

Villains need to be Crowd Control and Interrupt immune. A lot of them have long charge attacks that are just fodder for cc/interrupts. It's not fun getting constantly interrupted.

Could have high resistance of some sort rather than outright immunity. Alternately, you can design effects that only consume stacks when they successfully go off.

kaizerin wrote: »

Villains need a way to break or reduce blocking, at least temporarily.

Depends. Do they do enough damage that blocking is essential? I mean, if the player version of Gravitar can throw a yellow bubble, it's fine if they can't break block

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notyuu

Ok, so I went on and took a look at the gear and a poke at the villain devices.

1: Overall damage output on the devices seems to be somewhat low, rendering them incapable of killing anything outside of a DPS or AT, maybe have it so that the final powers that have a long CD/only get to use ones in a blue moon are so strong they one-shot players that are not blocking?

2: None of the devices when active render you knock or hold immune, while this might not seem a big issue, getting knocked into a bunch of UNTIL defenders and them promptly getting 2-shot from full health is annoying.

3: As it stands, the way the gear is setup is rather interesting, but may i suggest making the set bonuses different from the justice gear ones? like +def instead of +offence?

4: The token rate is laughable, you get a measly 5 tokens for killing a player, which is rather hard to do, when factored in with the pricing of the stuff.....well, I don't think we're going to be seeing anybody outside of the rich and extremely dedicated be using any of the store items any time soon.

5: It is impossible to fight against any stealth using players when using the devices, despite the NPC versions being able to see though stealth.

6: You can target and attack other super villains....it makes it rather tricky to fight against heros when everybody gets all bunched up.

7: The mechanics behind the power unlock on gravitar and medusa are rather confusing, and difficult to inact, I suggest making them work in a similar manner to grond's power unlock system, as that is both simple to understand and use.

8: The rate at which Grond gains "stacks" of whatever it's called to unlock his powers, should increase as his health gets lower, on an inverse scaling, e.g. 40% health left = 60% faster stacks.

9: Gravitar lacks her orange bubble power (should be her final power unlock), and by extent and signafiant damage output.

10: There needs to be something done about player heals vs the devices, as a good self-healing tank is literally unkillable with said devices, maybe have anybody fighting them suffer a healing debuff or have their final attack be a one-shot against the players would counter this to an extent.

Last thing, The super villain devices do need their damage buffing, with gravitar needing it the most, due do barely being able to hurt anybody when using it, medusa comes in at a close second, except her final and mind-break attacks do decient damage to players...and grond has the sufficent damage...it's just a little slow to add together.

deadman20

This was great and fun, but now's the time to focus on fixing the issues with it so this can be the best it can possibly be.

--

These Onslaught Villains aren't very tough for what they should be. They do not appear to have resistances to Knocks and Holds and are not very unique in their stats. Strongarm Villains like Grond should be Knock Immune, and Medusa should be incredibly hard to control. Rather than giving her Hold Resist/Immunity though, I'd opt for abilities that allow her to break free of any and all Crowd Control effects immediately and give her a short amount of Resistance to them after using said ability in addition to the normally stacking Hold Resist stacks. I feel that all of these villains need to have some resistance to all knocks period though.

Onslaught Villains are incredibly susceptible to normally Hostile and Friendly NPC damage, especially from the Onslaught Target NPCs. I think they should just be considered Neutral targets by the regular Hostile NPCs so that they don't interfere with the battle between the Villain and the Heroes.

Onslaught Villains can attack one another... for whatever reason. I actually think this would be a good idea to keep, but the villains should have a high damage resistance against other Onslaught Villains' attacks. Collateral Damage and all.

Onslaught Gravitar's Gravity Well Debuff stacks, and when it does, it gets out of control really fast. I say ensure that there can only be one stack on any given target at any time.

Onslaught Villains appear to be tagged as "Henchman Ranked" enemies, so things like Swallowtail Cut and even the 1% Instant Deathray Advantage could potentially stop these Villains short in their Onslaught. This should be looked at, badly.

I don't know about you, but I think the numbers on the Guardian Token Gains and Costs should be looked at. 10,000 Tokens means the player has to have two of their Inventory Slots taken up by them before they can unlock a new villain to play as. I'm thinking to reduce the Token Costs and Gains to 10% to cut back on unnecessary values. So 1000 Tokens to Unlock a Villain, 100 Guardian Tokens to pick up a Onslaught Token to play a Villain with and a gain of 1, 2, or 3 Tokens every few seconds while fighting or defeating a Villain instead of 10, 20, or 30 Tokens. And these Onslaught Tokens are rather deserving of the Currency Tab, this way they don't take up Inventory Space at all. Oh, and have the Onslaught Tokens and Villain Tokens be transferable via the account's Hideout Shared Bank just like Drifthurr Salvage.

I think Onslaught Villains should have ways to weaken their opponent or buff themselves during the fight. Case in point: Turando and his Self-Healing Shenanigans and certain Brick-wall Player Characters who won't take any damage from these villains anyway due to their over-the-top Damage Reistance ratings. Maybe give Grond some form of Trauma and have Gravitar reduce Resistances. Medusa's shtick is the whole Stack and Detonate thing, have her focus on that. We don't want the villains to be guaranteed to fail because of one person being able to outright counter them.


- From this point forward, I am assuming these are meant to be Placeholders, but still need to be mentioned and kept in mind. -

Onslaught Heirloom Equipment is identical to Nemesis Heirloom Equipment. I say the Additional Exp Gain, is to be replaced with Additional Onslaught Token Gain.

Onslaught Set Defensive and Utility Primaries are identical to Justice Set Defensive and Utility Primaries. These should be swapped up to be more unique like the Onslaught Set's Offensive Primaries.

Onslaught's Savior and Onslaught's Defender Offensive Primaries have the same bonus. I believe Onslaught's Savior should make it so allies near the target being attacked by the wearer have a chance to gain a small shield or a heal or something. Affects only a certain amount of targets and has an internal cooldown and all.

--

Let's do this guys, you have my my moral support on this one! You can do it!​​

crypticbuxom

I thought this Gravitar was going to be as strong as she was in the Rampage. That one can be taken down by a small handful of people but a whole Zone taking down a trash version?​​​

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kaiserin

pantagruel01 wrote: »

kaizerin wrote: »

Villains need a way to break or reduce blocking, at least temporarily.

Depends. Do they do enough damage that blocking is essential? I mean, if the player version of Gravitar can throw a yellow bubble, it's fine if they can't break block

I'm not sure the player Gravitar should be able to throw something of that magnitude. I do think they need a decent damage bump, but 80-100k might be a touch much.

I don't think they should be able to permanently disable block, perhaps something on a decent cooldown that disables player blocks/reduces their effectiveness by x amount for a few seconds.​​

stratluver

When fighting a Medusa my charge attacks take longer and the bar "jitters". I couldn't tell if this is intentional or not with so many power icons going on.

pantagruel01

kaizerin wrote: »

I'm not sure the player Gravitar should be able to throw something of that magnitude.

Unless there's a bubble or some method that prevents respawn and zerg rush, it's really not a problem if a villain occasionally one-shots heroes, at least if they're up against a bunch of players. I'm not sure if 80k damage hits are the best way of handling this, but if you want a villain where 5-10 players actually have to team up to take them on, they're going to need at least close to Rampage level damage output.

aiqa

Could we get the tokens added to the Debugger so I can do dps pars.... I mean test the new gear for bugs?

ladygadfly

Hi Folks,

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Play with the Devs session today and to all of you who are continuing to give us feedback here. We plan to have a few more of these sessions over the next few weeks before the feature goes to LIVE so we can get this feature to a place we're all happy with! Most of us anyway . We hope you all will continue to participate in the process.

We'll also be adding the all of the tokens to the PTS store early next week so keep an eye out for that update.

-Lady Gadfly & The Champions Team

kaiserin

pantagruel01 wrote: »

kaizerin wrote: »

Initial thoughts:

Villains need to be Crowd Control and Interrupt immune. A lot of them have long charge attacks that are just fodder for cc/interrupts. It's not fun getting constantly interrupted.

Could have high resistance of some sort rather than outright immunity. Alternately, you can design effects that only consume stacks when they successfully go off.

I'm leaning on the side of immunity due to how the Villains are setup. They all have long cooldown powers that will cripple them quite badly if interrupted (Gravitar has one on a minute, youch). This is supposed to be a fun ten minutes for the user, it's not so fun when players are preventing you from acting.

Alternately I could see their abilities making them immune to cc/interrupts while charging/activating,

pantagruel01 wrote: »

kaizerin wrote: »

I'm not sure the player Gravitar should be able to throw something of that magnitude.

Unless there's a bubble or some method that prevents respawn and zerg rush, it's really not a problem if a villain occasionally one-shots heroes, at least if they're up against a bunch of players. I'm not sure if 80k damage hits are the best way of handling this, but if you want a villain where 5-10 players actually have to team up to take them on, they're going to need at least close to Rampage level damage output.

Maybe, this is open world meaning that not everyone will be 40 and geared, where that's expected for a Rampage.​​

deadman20

ladygadfly wrote: »

**EDIT Other Patchnotes
- Pressing 'esc' will close Event Details, Calendar, Welcome Page, Journal windows.
- Intelligence: Cooldown Reduction granted by Intelligence has been drastically reduced.
- Cooldown Reduction Rating: Cooldown Reduction granted by Cooldown Reduction rating has been drastically reduced.
- Telepathy: Psi Lash: Should now start up much faster and activate more consistently.
- Power Armor: Wrist Bolter: Should now start up much faster and activate more consistently.

A Cooldown Reduction Nerf from Intelligence and Equipment Rating? Okay, I can live with that. It possibly means that Aura of Arcane Clarity will be a bit more useful now as a primary source for Cooldown and Cost Reducing effects. Though if this was your attempt to reduce the Active Defense/Offense Cycling, you really could've just made the Shared Cooldowns harsher instead. That way you still achieve the goal and not harm anything else in the process.

Speaking of Auras, can they get a slight Mechanics change? Like say, be active up to 100 Feet for allies in the team and share up to 15 Feet for allies not in the team? Could that be a thing, pretty please?

The other fixes are very welcome too, by the way. ​​

notyuu

kaizerin wrote: »

pantagruel01 wrote: »

kaizerin wrote: »

Villains need a way to break or reduce blocking, at least temporarily.

Depends. Do they do enough damage that blocking is essential? I mean, if the player version of Gravitar can throw a yellow bubble, it's fine if they can't break block

I'm not sure the player Gravitar should be able to throw something of that magnitude. I do think they need a decent damage bump, but 80-100k might be a touch much.

Dosn't have to be the same damage, just the same power mechanics wise...as the device version lacks large bubbles that the NPC version is oh so infamious for.

chaelk

BUG:
if you start using the Become device.
1. you can't turn it off till it runs out.
2. if you try and remove the device from your tray , it vanishes.

Medusa vs Guardian NPC- 2 ranged attacks, then melee. it died fast. aoe to kill the healers.​​

biffsmackwell

notyuu wrote: »

4: The token rate is laughable, you get a measly 5 tokens for killing a player, which is rather hard to do, when factored in with the pricing of the stuff.....well, I don't think we're going to be seeing anybody outside of the rich and extremely dedicated be using any of the store items any time soon.

There were a few times when I killed several people in one run. Ended up with 60 tokens. Not everyone is unkillable (I'm sure not, as a Hero), but there's a big disparity between builds. You can really tell who's got the good builds and who doesn't. And those who don't can easily be "picked on." Kinda sucks, but everyone gets rewarded the same way, don't they?

bluegrassbeast wrote: »

Wait, I thought the onslaught targets were the bots with the ridiculous 11 million damage (only slightly rounded up, there - I checked) attack?

And sorry, on Grond at least Knocks need to go. Right now, while there's potential, the fun factor for the villain is close to nil, and the sheer number of charge-up attacks combined with the knocks? Partially to blame.

Oh, hmm, you could be right. I did just assume that we were supposed to take out just the dudes inside while staying away from the Defender.

Edit: Yup, you were right, you have to take out the Defender. In two hits he got me down to like 5% health.

stratluver wrote: »

When fighting a Medusa my charge attacks take longer and the bar "jitters". I couldn't tell if this is intentional or not with so many power icons going on.

This happened to me too, and I think it made the power activation take longer.​​

theravenforce

Onslaught Mode Tags:

- The timer on these things seems to work appropriately after taking down an Onslaught boss OR duelling OR having the boss timeout OR being killed by an Onslaught boss. In other situations it hits 4:57 and resets to 5:00 constantly. This is problematic.
- Currently the timer carries on after death. This should reset upon respawning please.

Bosses

The concept of this is great but there are several issues that need to be addressed.

Transformation

Bosses don't seem to be full become devices or transforms. They need to be to avoid specs like Sentinel Mastery or Kickback from working whilst I am in Onslaught Boss Mode. If not I will be able to heal myself upon killing a player who is trapped in a CC effect.


Boss Movement

I am glad that we're able to access travel powers but we need to have a change in the cooldowns. As we all saw on PTS, players can rip through bosses for a number of reasons. The only difference is that these are players who are used to moving around a lot, not NPCs who run. I am grateful for the enhanced jumping and running speed, but with the movement debuffs that players have access to, I think basic, sans travel power needs to be bumped up SLIGHTLY. Breaking it up:

Medusa

Medusa is the queen of movement and benefits greatly from it, which I am pleased about. I may not like Medusa but she's the CC boss so I have to like her (I would have preferred Mind Slayer! ). Her Mind Warp is a welcome addition but she needs to be able to use it more. Put it on a 50 second fixed cooldown and grant it rank 3 Teleport Movement speed.

Gravitar

Her flight needs to last for longer than 8 seconds. Allow it to be toggled on and off for 30 seconds with a 50 second fixed CD after those 30 seconds are up. Also her flight needs to start up at max Millennial Flight speed, rather than a weird version of Power Flight.

Grond

Same as Grav, allow his TP to be toggled on for 30 seconds at full strength then enter a 50 sec CD.

Damage

This is an iffy area for me to comment on, so I'll break it up:

Grond

Damage initially needs to be a bit higher, in an instance where tons of DoTs are applied...I can see the Rage mechanic working fine but outside of that he's just a sack of grumpy green HP. Please start him off at 10-30 stacks of Rage. Additional instances of the buff up to 100 should not cause it to reset instantly, perhaps have him stay at 100 stacks for 6 seconds and unleash pure fury and THEN reset. Having faced Grond, I think this would be a good move for him.

Medusa

Her damage is okay once you know HOW to use her but she has her own issues without looking into her damage. Duelling one player says her damage is pretty good but I think it should be upped a TINY bit, however this may not be necessary with the coming changes (whatever they may be). She needs her lunge to have a baked in Nailed To The Ground, otherwise she has NOTHING to deal with flying opponents.

Gravitar

Lawd hath mercy on Gravy's soul. It looks like the costume change (which is fabulous) caused her to loose the attitude and the damage. Now whilst I have solo'd Gravitar once way back during Interrupt New Telepathy...I've never done so again until today. I should not be able to solo Gravitar. At present her damage is too low, even MOBS do better damage than she does (DPS wise). This is likely a CD/Mechanics issue (mechanics in the sense that I'm doing something wrong). Also, where are her random cascades? Where are her holds? Where is her Force Eruption PBAoE? We need those back pronto. As it stands she isn't too much of a threat but needs serious help in her powers department. On the plus side I like her costume and the unique targeting reticule. She does alright vs one target, but her Crushing Force AoE should not split up in terms of damage if it hits more than one person.

Effects of Crowd Control & Knocks

I assume that these effects have been allowed to remain so that players do not to feel so dwarfed by Signature villains or higher level bosses by invalidating mechanics they might have build around or upon. I must say, on both sides of the coin, playing as a hero and as a villain this is a welcome improvement. It makes fighting unpredictable and means it is useful to use CC powers, which is a first in CO particularly.

It also means players LEARN the value of BLOCK, which both new & old alike are so used to not using.


Crowd Control

As a CCer, I am grateful that Onslaught bosses are able to be CC'd. Under no circumstances should this change. This is the ONLY time in Champions Online where boss level targets (not counting SVs) can be reliably CC'd and IT. IS. GLORIOUS.

For anyone complaining about CC interrupting boss mechanics. You have 3-5.5 MILLION HP and movement abilities. Use them.

You also have access to Hold Resistance stacks, which as the name indicates, grants you resistance against CC effects. In Onslaught Rampage Mode you can also break out of holds, like normal, so there's no problem at all.


Knocks

Knocks on the other hand...Innately I'd prefer if bosses had Knock Resistance stacks or this:

[Onslaught Mode! Buff] - This buff makes knocks less effective on you, reducing the distance you can be knocked by 40%.

In addition to the Knock Resistance stacks we already have. If this cannot be done then I'd suggest allowing bosses to have blocks on a cooldown, but that's another thing to address.

Cooldowns

Whilst I understand the need for them...the bosses are stunted by the cooldown length applied to some basic abilities, the possible exception in this area is Grond. Perhaps globally halving them is something to look at, although looking at them on an individual basis is probably best.

Medusa:

- She needs to have the cooldowns on basic abilities halved. (TK Breaker should be a 3 second CD IMO and TK Lunge should be 9 seconds.)
- TK Shatter (Mind Break animation) does not reliably double stacks of Mind Spikes as it says it should. The doubling should be instant, without delay and perhaps have a chance to apply Mind Spikes to more than one target, perhaps all targets in a 15ft sphere of primary target.
- Her TK Lunge needs to have a special NTTG baked into it and have a reduced CD.


Ideally Medusa should be quite mobile and have high lockdown power with the CC abilities she uses and have lowered cooldowns. Medusa's primary ability lore wise is paralysis, I'd change TK Spear to ROOT main target and PARALYZE anyone else within range. Her TK Blade attacks need to be able to hit more than one target, make her super basic attack (the one that applies Mind Spikes every other hit) a 250ft cone, otherwise she becomes a tad underwhelming.

Gravitar:

- Basic Attacks need their cooldowns halved
- Her Gravity Well is very annoying, perhaps tone this down? The spinning is very disorientating. It's almost at the level where that sort of reverse repel rotation should be applied to Implosion Engine to make it better and worthy of Ultimate title.

Gravitar really needs some clickies or some form of lockdown ability, IMO, then again she has a very good range, so...not sure. Ideally Gravitar should be the boss you run into and go "Okay...I'mma need back up." and you call your friends and the zone to beat on. Players are used to Gravitar being dangerous and somewhat unpredictable, her attacks should reflect this. I would change the secondary cascade she has into a random target maintain of quick fire cascades, as per the alert and put a CD on that.

Grond

By and large is fine. IMO. I didn't use him a great deal so others will have more valuable things to say on Grond. I think he'll be a favourite, and we all know there'll be an explosion of Paranormal GRONDivity in Zone chat, making ALL the Grond jokes.

--

I noticed that the damage Onslaught SV's produce scales to # of current foes, so the little testing we've all done...does not in truth scale to how many there are on LIVE.

That's all I have to say for now...it's late.

Final Notes:

-Whilst we do want the Become Devices to be tougher, we need them to be balanced so that players can have a VERY good chance of taking them down but also that players don't walk all over them.
-Grond/Gravitar work well together.
-Medusa really works well once she gets into the swing of things. Seriously.
-I can see myself using this device for both RP and PvE purposes, just allowing players to fight me whenever in order to get gear. It really puts methods to obtain gear into players hands, even more so than Rampages, which is a GREAT addition.
-Thank you for producing this, and running this event, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad Ren Cen is well protected .

theravenforce

stratluver wrote: »

When fighting a Medusa my charge attacks take longer and the bar "jitters". I couldn't tell if this is intentional or not with so many power icons going on.

Happened to me also, this is intended as per her passive Mind Spikes.

theravenforce

Another question...has anyone fought these Onslaught bosses on Vehicles yet?

mrhinkypunk

kaizerin wrote: »

Thoughts on cooldown reduction: I'm still mulling over this change. At first glance it seems like a lot, but the reality is cooldown reduction was doing *way* too much. With no investment in int I had characters bringing AO's/AD's down to 40 seconds. That's a little over 50% in cd reduction with just mods and gear. That's insane. Now with heavy mod and int investment you're looking at around a 30% decrease in cooldowns, which is still very good.​​

So me and a couple of others have been looking at the CD changes from a PvP point of view for the past few hours testing a few builds. I have to say that I'm happy Recovery's CD reduction was kept how it was, you can take AD's to about 55 seconds now using recovery primary with a build that is still pretty viable.

I have to say that I really like the change to the CD, at first it was a shock but in practice? It was a hit to UR builds but other builds could get away with it. Maintains are now a lot stronger in PvP with bursts on their long CD's (other than FC but that needs an AO on really) however bursts are still viable. I like the fact this creates an amazing feeling of freedom.

With AO's on a longer CD holds are a lot stronger as you can't break free as often anymore however having 2 AO's or AD's on your build still feels just as viable as having only 1 which is nice as it leaves that option there. At first people will be shocked about the recharge but I think it's a nice step in the right direction with a change that has been needed for years. People are too accustomed to CD reduction being so easy to come by.

notyuu

theravenforce wrote: »

Another question...has anyone fought these Onslaught bosses on Vehicles yet?

when I was testing out grond, I had more than a few plucky players go up agsaint me in Vehicles...they were swatted out of the air in a near instant though.

draogn

deadman20 wrote: »

Onslaught Heirloom Equipment is identical to Nemesis Heirloom Equipment. I say the Additional Exp Gain, is to be replaced with Additional Onslaught Token Gain.
​​

I'd personally prefer if the xp bonus remained, it gives players an additional method for getting xp heirlooms. Especially if their nemesis aren't giving them clues/spawning.