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PTS Update (7/11): FC.20.20110705.3
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
FC.20.20110705.3 Patch Notes
ETA: 6:30 PM PST (GMT-7)
Archetypes:
The Disciple
The Impulse
Powers:
General Powers
Stats
Heavy Weapon
Might
Martial Arts
Munitions
Infernal
Telekinesis
Known Issues (Please write in red text when submitting bugs to this thread so issues are easier to find.):
ETA: 6:30 PM PST (GMT-7)
Archetypes:
The Disciple
- Now gets the Id Mastery passive at level 8 instead of Ego Form.
The Impulse
- The innate talent for The Impulse has been changed to properly match his Super Stats.
Powers:
General Powers
- Melee Passives (This includes Way of the Warrior, Unstoppable, and the new Id Mastery.): The formula being used to determine the damage bonus provided by this power has been adjusted. Previously, it started off slightly higher than it should have, and fell off far too quickly as you ranked up the power and increased your Super Stats, up to the point where it was providing less of a benefit than a comparable ranged passive. This was not intended, and has been corrected. The new formula means that at Rank 1 with low Super Stat values, you may see as much as a 5-6% reduction in damage bonus provided by this power. However, at Rank 3, you will see an increase of at least 6%, climbing up to much, much higher increases as you increase your Super Stats. This new formula ensures that the melee passives will always stay competetive with their ranged counterparts.
Stats
- Electricity: Sparkstorm
- Force: Force Eruption
- Telekinesis: Telekinetic Eruption
- Celestial: Expulse
- Sorcery: Pillar of Poz
- Might: Shockwave
- Might: Iron Chain
- Might: Iron Cyclone
- Infernal: Lash
- Infernal: Vicious Cyclone
Heavy Weapon
- Previously, the default weapon in the tailor for Heavy Weapon would display as "Axe" and show the Axe geo from the Single/Dual Blade weapon option, but would just use the correct default Heavy Hammer and Blade geo in game. The "Axe" listing in the drop down has been removed, and the default will now correctly display as "Heavy Hammer and Blade."
Might
- Haymaker: This powers Knock Back now properly scales with Strength.
- Unstoppable: The formula for the damage increase melee passives grant has been changed. See the General Powers note on Melee Passives for more details.
Martial Arts
- Way of the Warrior: The formula for the damage increase melee passives grant has been changed. See the General Powers note on Melee Passives for more details.
Munitions
- Lock N Load: The crit chance buff and power cost discount have been reduced slightly, but now apply to all powers.
Infernal
- Rebirth: Updated the tool-tip to properly state that it "deals X damage every 2 seconds for 30 seconds" instead of "X damage over 30 seconds." This is just a tool-tip change.
Telekinesis
- Ego/Id Blades: Tailor options for these weapons should now properly display in the tailor.
- Ego Blade/Kinetic Darts: Incisive Wit: The Id Surge caused by this advantage no longer counts as an Energy Form, nor does having an Energy Form on prevent it from applying. It now can only occur once every 20 seconds, down from once every 30 seconds.
- Id Mastery: The formula for the damage increase melee passives grant has been changed. See the General Powers note on Melee Passives for more details.
- Telekinesis: The amount of Ego required to lift objects with this power has been reduced at all ranks by a substantial amount. At Rank 3, the amount of Ego required to lift an object should be equivalent to the amount of Strength required to lift it as well.
- Telekinetic Shield: Telekinetic Reinforcement: The amount of resistance this advantage gives has been reduced slightly, but now affects all damage instead of just physical.
- Mental Discipline: Now increases all Ego damage, instead of just Melee Ego damage. The damage increase has been reduced slightly.
Known Issues (Please write in red text when submitting bugs to this thread so issues are easier to find.):
- Known issues will be posted here.
Post edited by Archived Post on
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Comments
TK Burst is broken this patch. It animates on the character instead of the target. Broken at all ranks.
I can confirm that. Tested with Shadow form.
Incisive Wit does not proc when using Shadowform. When i removed shadowform, It proc'd immediately.
So I see the damage on the top end took a hit.
However, I noticed with a mere 212 STR one can knock a foe 270ft away. Interesting tradeoff. I am satisfied so far. (Haymaker was a static 89ft before)
whoops maybe that was the reason, should check again
there is a "Boom!" sound effect and a small graphical effect that keeps playing most of the time on ranged attacks.
Steps to repeat:
It works with the two Ego forms though.
The subsequent buffs you have now given to all the melee sets, the dragon wrathers and claws and lolmakers... it's just insane.
I'm not sure I even know how to begin explaining this one if it is not self-evident. Giving all melee even higher burst damage was not what this game needed.
Tank killing. Now sets other than Darkness haz it.
(Ok, so not really. They'll still be kited and ground down to death. But it's a nice thought)
However, when actually testing Ego Blade Breech, my damage numbers were the same as last build when using Id Mastery which seemed very odd. Ego Blade Annihilation also hit for the same. Then, just for giggles, I went ahead and tested my theoretical best possible attack sequence of 5x TK Burst, 2x EBB tap, 1x fully charged EBA. Using that trick, I got EBA to hit for 10-11k. The only thing missing would be waiting for incisive wit to proc, but given that I saw the bugs already reported, didn't bother to add it in to the testing mix since it would have made checking EBB v EBA a bit unreliable.
EBA being able to hit for 2k more than EBB seem a bad tradeoff for eating all your ego leech stacks. Both EBB and EBA only hit those big numbers once EBB gets all 3 debuff stacks, so it's kinda a slow buildup that will only ever happen against big mobs and tank players. Given all that, I suspect skipping EBA and just going with EBB will be a much better DPS choice since you're only giving up a little bit of damage by not taking EBA at all, and if you replace EBA in your build with say, the shiny new Lock n Load, you will prolly buff your DPS significantly more.
On to ranged stuffs...
TK Lance taps are still fine. TK Lance fully charged is still a waste. Also, the difference on my toon between IM and EF passives was 500 points of damage. That seems like a decent balance between the two forms for a toon with average stats given that fully charged TK Lance was at best 2500 (EF) and 2000 (IM).
Telekinesis itself is going to be far more predicated on the maps rather than the power. Also, it really needs to shut off travel ala normal throwing to make it anything more than a novelty power as it's just never going to be in the DPS race that TK Assault and hopefully eventually TK Lance are in.
Ego Choke is a solid hold with okay damage. Of course, in PvP it's the same cheese as all maintained holds with the way resists work. I predict that if Ego Storm (the top PvP QQ power) gets nerfed in any way without a change to underlying resist mechancis, Ego Choke will be the goto replacement power (and there will be much rage on the forums about PvP getting stuff that is all hunky dory in PvE nerfed like usual even though the reality is that Ego Storm is PvE easy mode which is a must for an AT like Mind to have any chance of soloing)
Ego Hold is okay with an easy to overlook advantage.
TK Burst and TK Maelstrom are going to lead to many interesting debates in terms of which is better for Ego Leech setup. TKM can be faster. TKB is guaranteed.
So my three concerns with where this pass has gone:
1. TK Lance is seriously underwhelming.
2. Ego Blade Annihilation just doesn't give enough back to justify adding it to a build alongside Ego Blade Breech, especially since it eats those now useful stacks of Ego Leech.
3. The stat changes for EGO make it an okay stand-alone stat albeit nowhere near what STR, CON, INT, or even DEX are. REC is not a stand alone stat and honestly, I only bring it up because of the Disciple AT. As far as I'm concerned, REC isn't a superstat period. It's the stat you gear up to the point where you can fire off a few key powers from standing (ie Conviction to fuel MSA and keep a full energy bar outside of combat). Electric toons might want to gear a bit in as well just because it works well enough with Ionic Reverb, although even there SS End is far more valuable.
In PvE, it's just pushing melee to be a bit more damage than ranged. Seems a fair trade for the higher risk of getting into melee range.
In PvP, it doesn't matter at all. Melee toons currently kill by making sure their opponents don't get to fight back via juggling holds and knocks. So if it takes a melee toon 3 seconds to kill you now versus 4 before, who cares? You're still dead, and you were still nothing but a punching bag.
QFT.
But, those skill ranks were clearly not meant to function like they currently do on live.
That being said, considering the wealth of movement powers, + teleport, and the game mechanic which doesn't allow anyone to actually physically move out of the way of ranged attacks... melee's typical mmo PvE disadvantages are heavily mitigated already. No real need to make them deal THAT much more dmg than ranged. The damage increase is also multiplicative, once on base damage for melee powers, once on the slotted passive % increase. And that's not including Aggressor/Forms, which for ranged only Toxic damage has. That's a LOT more damage.
I'd much rather see stun/hold mechanics be buffed for melee powers (longer duration for stuns!), and/or the stacking KB resist buff be eliminated for melee powers than a frankly unnecessary universal melee dmg buff. Melee has no problem dealing damage right now. But several ranged powersets still do!
Huh.
Does Roomsweeper have any increased range or was all well to begin with?
The last thing the game needs is more/longer damn stuns/holds/knocks. You're already unable to control the game 50% of the time you're playing because of them. If a melee toon successfully lunges at you, you mine as well just sit on your hands for 5-10 seconds and wait to die as a ranged build since you won't be able to control the game anyways. And as far as pve goes, most mobs just die if you happen to sneeze in their direction as melee, so it's definitely not needed there.
TL;DR
No one wants to play a game where the game takes away control of the game from you every 20 seconds for 10 seconds at a time. That's why they implemented the resist stacks in the first place...
I was speaking 100% from a PvE perspective, but you DR. The whole "most mobs just die if you sneeze in their general direction as melee" thing is the whole problem. That's why increasing damage is not the right way to go. Not needing CC to kill melee mobs doesn't justify not having them, it just makes melee necessisarily a much more one dimensional game than it has to be, taking out the bulk of the fun. That's the root of the problem, and it's sad that you treat it as the "solution". Also, "eliminate" is probably the wrong word, but perhaps having melee knocks have a % chance to ignore the stacking buff or some other mechanic to make more KB and/or Stun in PvE without resulting in the ability to lock. Having to wait for the resists to wear off makes no sense theme-wise for half the stuns/knocks in this game.
I am not speaking for PvP at all and only have casual knowledge about CO's PvP. I guess devs are set against making a "reduced effects for PvP" effect, the same way On-Next-Hit powers are "reduced effects for AoE"?
edit: getting off-topic, suggestions for PvP vs PvE far exceeds scope of update. won't post more about this topic here.
They just need to make one stack = immunity instead of three.
Thank God for the melee passive fix. I am SO READY for Unstoppable to actually start trying to live up to its name. For people who think this is a bad idea...no. This needs to happen, folks. It is absolutely not right that the more limited, tighter-focused melee passives are less powerful than the broader general damage passives. Yes, Dragon's Wrath is annoying and Dragon's Claws can score heap big crits. That is the fault of those particular skills, not the passives which drive them.
Anyways. TK changes:
-Lance still blows. That said, I love the TK Lance itself, though I think you may want to get an animator to look at the character animation. Using Skewer to throw the thing works just fine, up until the TK character takes a heavy step back and hauls a nonexistent giant sword out of a nonexistent dead dood. I really, really want to be able to center a ranged TK build around TK Lance now, but the charge effects are so terrible that charging the skill is a mistake as it stands. Perhaps if it only ate one stack of Ego Leech I'd use it, but given that it eats your whole stack of Leech for terrible damage scaling, a negligible AoE bonus, and a dodgy-at-best increase to regaining the stacks of Ego Leech you could have just kept in the first place...yeahno. The charged version of this power still needs a lot of work before it's worth the T3 tag.
-TK Shield w/Reinforcement is still generally inferior to Force Shield w/Sheath, especially since Force Shield looks sufficiently Ego-y to fit most TK character's concept. I get that ye can't do Laser Knight or Force Sheath on TK Shield, since those are on Energy and Force Shields respectively...but what about something new and useful to a TK character? Have Reinforcement offer a stacking buff, something like +1% Ego for five seconds or something, up to ten stacks, whenever an attack strikes it/its Reinforcement. The best block-replace powers are the ones that feed back into your attacks Energy Shield defends you while you attack, Force Shield w/Sheath feeds you energy so you can keep attacking. Having TK Shield do something similar would really help it stand out amidst a sea of who-cares shield powers nobody takes for anything but theme.
-Telekinesis-the-power is much better now. I'm afraid it'll always be a novelty choice, but at least it's now a novelty choice you don't have to feel guilty about taking. I still think having it pick up a randomly generated object a'la Hurl would really kinda suck TK-t-p's ability to make random scenery pick itself up and fly at the enemy of its own will is what makes it fun. Now if only there was more crap in the late-game maps that you could actually use the power on...but that's a lot of work to make just the one niche-y, novelty power better. Ah well. I do agree that having it innately knock out travel powers would actually give it a really interesting secondary function, though.
-Mental Discipline: Thank you. That is all. ...no, really, thank you. Between this version of Mental Discipline and the innate +crit chance in TK Assault on top of TK Assault being awesome in its own right a ranged TK character can actually get away with superstatting Ego without any Dex. You get the massive Severity, and your skills help make up the difference in crit chance you don't get. Heh...I'm actually rather eager to test stuff and see how well something like an EGO/PRE char with Mental Discipline and TK Assault can leverage +crit severity gear in its secondary offense slots. Pile of Dex in primary offense, +15% extra crit severity and +offense from secondary offense slots. Heh...I can see the good players facepalming already, but I consider the fact that I can even just contemplate testing the idea with a straight face to be a step up.
TK Assault is -still- not animating
TK Lance still roots on taps
Aside from those three, I love the changes. Keep up the good work.
edit- did some testing with ego form off, incisive wits proc'd five times, without killing the dummy. With ego form on, I downed four level 40 dummies with my energy builder alone, no incisive wit procs at all.
please for the love of god if youre going to boost the offensive passives boost them all or give us the ranged damage toggle weve been asking for since the kitchen sink patch.
Kiting hasn't been much of an issue since the melee pass. The numerous root/snare/cc options pretty much decimated the ranged kiting game unless a player really built for it and knew what they were doing. For the average player, ending up in melee isn't in question.
I understand that the prior scaling on the melee passives might have actually been an error. All the same, it was an error in favor of over all game balance, and correcting just threw more things out of whack that need to be fixed.
Agreed totally. In PvP, Ranged is so outclassed nowadays it's not even funny. Melee should do more damage because it's harder to get into range of its attacks, I understand that.
The problem is that it's SO easy to get into melee range and stay there (due to an extremely trivial power that roots/slows/turns off travel powers/stops blocking/whatever that costs no End and is on a practically nonexistent 3 second timer) that any advantage Ranged had (you know, being in range) is laughed at and ignored.
PvP is broken. Utterly, totally, and completely. The Melee vs Ranged thing isn't even remotely balanced and hasn't been so in ages.
This heads into PvE too, but not as badly, as most mobs can't turn off your travel power anymore (unlike before), which means you can sit back and rain fire and brimstone on them. But a lot of mobs still have lunge type moves, so if you're not a flier, you'll see them in your faces anyway.
Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, Lunges are broken and are the core problem of this. They're too easy to use (next to no End cost and negligible recharge time), too powerful (slow/root/stun/remove travel power/stop blocking all on ONE power), too long of a range (60ft, which is beyond the range of most of the more damaging attacks of Ranged, at 50ft), and they're the move that everybody and everybody wants to have.
And then there's the argument of Defensive Passives being too powerful compared to Offensive ones. And that's a whole different issue that I don't want to even think of getting into.
TLDR: PvP is totally broken and Ranged verses Melee isn't balanced in the slightest. CO is not a PvPing game and it really shows. Why do people expect balance in PvP again?
Ahahaha.
The game probably does need more cool 100' powers for variety, but basically this. If you got into lunge range you did it wrong.
Bug: TK blades not showing up in character creation tailor.
Nemesis Tailor doesn't even have the Weapons tab for the Telekinesis Powerset.
Are you playing in the same Hero Games matches I am?
In T2, lightning arc, fireballs, and anything ranged pestilence shred melee long before they get into melee range.
In T3, things get closer as melee users get more control powers. The trick for ranged here isn't avoiding lunges, because you can't. It's making sure the melee toons can't stay in melee range. So either use a knockback or ascension, or some defense that lets you survive the 5 seconds until you can use your travel power again.
Of course, every now and then you'll run into the melee player who built for control which by level 29, they can pull off fairly well juggling stuns/holds and knockups.
In T4, it comes down to melee using control powers versus ranged raw dps. You're right in that melee has a lot of built in control powers, yet if you listening in coPvP chat or in the Hero Games forums, not a lot of complaints about melee powers right now.
This is odd since it wasn't that long ago it was a lot of "ZOMG Dragon's Wrath is OP" and now it's all about "ZOMG ruin tanks are OP". The odd part being nothing changed about either of those powers or builds. All that changed was that people saw that the ruin tank beat them up, so they joined in the 'fun'.
Oh, and Ebon Ruin, the key power of ruin tanks...ya...it's ranged, not melee. Which brings us back around the fact that even though I play mostly squishies and lots of them are ranged, I'm totally okay with the overall max damage attacks being melee, not ranged, and hence, I'm completely in favor of the melee passives finally being fixed.
Gigabolt, Defile, Ebon Ruin, Assault Rifle, all the tier zero blasts, Minigun, Shoulder Launcher, Shuriken Throw etc etc etc.
Some you can move around while charging or maintaining, some you can't but can still be used quickly.
Basically you picked the three worst kiting powers in the entire game and used them to support your argument that you can't kite.
With this patch and his up to offensive melee passive, this will be worse.
Nice patch for pve.
I hope you have plans to ranged passive soon. If not, Pvp will be fun for the next 6 months.
(Damn, already more than a year since the first melee patch, and this will be worse, oh my god!
It's not the fact that melee doing more damage than ranged, i'ts normal.
It's the fact that lunge ignore CC and add hold/snare/etc with or without advantage, the main problem.
It's not a real malus to be in 5fts of his opponent.
Pvp in this game is a joke, and i will not go it for a long time again after this pacth, it seems. :rolleyes:
I got them to show up, but they are an obnoxiously light, translucent pink and very hard to see. Definately need something to make them a little bit easier to see. They should also make it a bit more obvious that they have no base color themselves (the color options are useless) and are instead colored whatever color your power effects are (Orange Juliette's blades are all her trademark orange-cream).
As has already been pointed out, the dominant attack power set-up in PvP right now is Ebon Rift, Ebon Ruin, and add Shotgun for a full on DM clone. Ego Storm remains a real problem as well.
-edit-
Oh, and people are adding in Skarn's Bane now too for energy form cancelation.
Ebon ruin was the perfect solution to the massive invasion of melee tanks with MD and RR advantage we seen.
Now, ebon ruin tank is the new mode. (ego storm i don't speak of him. It is broken. And wanna be pvp roxxors like this type of "i win" broken powers).
But this will not change the fact than melee character will be again the god mode when the patch will be live. I bet 5$ on this.
Also, I wasn't referring to the standard Tailor. The blades do indeed show up there, though as mentioned they're hard to see. But when creating a new character, the blades don't appear at all.
so yeah when will haymaker end cost get reduced
For EBA: I would add something powerful (because ebb is powerful itself) like for 5 stack eaten a third attack is performed
for TK Lance: I would just increase a lot the extra damage done by each stack eaten.
And if all of these just make the spreadsheet explode, then add nice secondary effect instead like heal, energy burst, target debuff,...
"The files are in the computer!"
Just wanted to say that this SHOULD NOT BE the trade-off of using melee powers. Because if it were anyway true in fiction or real life, we'd all be using swords instead of guns.
I just want to point out that in comics (arguably our source material for this little simulations) characters that use melee attacks have one thing in common: they all have substantial defenses, particularly against ranged attacks.
Fast, light brawlers like Spidey dodge everything, and his dodge rate goes up to 100% at range. Same principle for daredevil. These are characters that are only meaningfully threatened by other melee toons.
Pokey-sharp-bit characters like Wolverine and Deadpool regenerate, and bullet holes don't even slightly deter them - only melee hackig slows them down. Deadpool supliments this with teleport dodgeing, and WOlverine has a super-senses defense we don't have the equivalent of in-game (but should).
Medium brawlers like captain America are defined by their ability to shrug off and avoid damage. THat shield is an Icon of comic-book powers and it pretty much negates ranged attacks while still allowing Cap to get occasionally get hit by, you guessed it, other melee characters.
Heavy brawlers like the Thing or Collossus simply cannot be hurt by less than massively powerful attacks - either other heavy brawlers or the very top end of ranged damage powers.
Basically there are no "squishies" in the melee DPS roster. That's the trade off of super-heroing. They don't hit harder than ranged. Energy-projection folk almost always threaten to do more damage than the punch-stab-chop crew (unless you're THE Hulk), but ranged comic characters ussually have proportionately lower survivabiity. Human torch can melt bullets, but when a heavy brawler slugs him, he's Done.
I put a post in Ask Cryptic asking about the Avenger role review that Ame hinted at in the past. I hope the devs get around to answering that one *wink*;)
Could you explain how a "Ruin Tank" works? I'm betting they're using Ebon ruin for reasons other than "wow, it's ranged" since there are a lot of ranged powers to choose from... One power should not be defining an entire mode of damage dealing... *eye's sword cyclone*
It's also called a "tank". Does that mean it runs a defensives stance/passive? Because the inequities between offensive and defensive passives always seemed more out of whack than Ranged/Melee.
Me too. It'll let the devs start atddressing the other parts of the cluster of stacking buffs that lead to the biggest numbers and (to me) some of the least interesting gameplay.
Comicbook tropes do not necessarily equate to good, usable, or fun gameplay. What you have described is not the paradigm that exists in CO, for better or worse. This is a paradigm that was established early on in CO's life -- it's not something that's going to change without a massive system overhaul that would only see the light of day in an entire game remake. Needless to say that's not in the cards.