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PTS update FC.22.20111114a.0
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PTS update FC.22.20111114a.0
This build is scheduled to hit PTS by 8:00PM PST
The focus of this build is to test the following changes to Infernal Review.
The following patch notes reflect what has changed to date.
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens
Here are the details of the Patch
Power Armor:
Might:
Celestial:
Infernal:
Bestial:
Unarmed:
Items:
Supernatural:
Sorcery:
UI:
This build is scheduled to hit PTS by 8:00PM PST
The focus of this build is to test the following changes to Infernal Review.
The following patch notes reflect what has changed to date.
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens
Here are the details of the Patch
Power Armor:
- Chest Beam: Now listed in the Ranged Area Attack category instead of the Ranged Attack category. This is just a display change, and does not have any effect on the power itself.
Might:
- Iron Chain: Damage variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
- Iron Lariat: Damage variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
- Iron Cyclone: Damage variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
Celestial:
- Vengeance: Damage variance reduced from 20% to 7.5%.
- Vengeance: Max charge time decreased from 2s down to 1.67s. However, maximum damage increased slightly, and max cost decreased ~1.5 Energy.
Infernal:
- Poison: No longer snares.
- Poison: Damage per tick reduced by 25%.
- Poison: Damage now has 50% shield penetration.
- Poison: Damage per tick now scales up with each stack of Poison instead of adding more ticks.
- Poison: Now stacks up to 10 times.
- Aspect of the Infernal: Now grants stacks of Infernal Strength when applying Poisons instead of when attempting Knocks.
- Aspect of the Infernal: The icon for the Infernal Strength buff has been changed to help differentiate it from the Aspect of the Infernal icon.
- Condemn: Damage variance reduced from 20% to 7.5%.
- Condemn: Max charge time decreased from 2s down to 1.67s. However, maximum damage increased slightly, and max cost decreased ~1.5 Energy.
- Defile: Damage variance increased from 0% to 5%.
- Defile: Plague Bearer: Now has auto description.
- Devour Essence: Damage reduced ~8%.
- Devour Essence: Damage variance increased from 0% to 5%, and Healing variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
- Devour Essence: Phlebotomist: Added auto description.
- Epidemic: New power! Maintained Toxic damage in a 15ft radius PBAoE.
- Epidemic: Each tick has a 20% chance to apply Poison to each target hit.
- Epidemic: If fully maintained, will double the amount of Poison on all targets hit.
- Epidemic: Outbreak: New advantage! Epidemic: Outbreak: Increases the chance to Poison by 10% and lowers the maximum maintain time of Epidemic by 1 second.
- Infernal Blast: New power! Deals single target Toxic damage.
- Infernal Blast: Has a chance (20-100% based on charge) to Poison your target.
- Infernal Blast: Now refreshes all Poisons on the target.
- Infernal Blast: Virulent Propagation: New advantage! If Infernal Blast is fully charged and hits a Poisoned target, a nearby target will take damage and receive a stack of Poison as well.
- Infernal Bolts: Initial activation now has a chance to apply Poison instead of Infect.
- Infernal Bolts: Toxin Overload: Now applies Poison instead of Infect.
- Infernal Bolts: Toxin Overload: Fixed Icon.
- Lash: Now deals +3% damage for each stack of Poison on the target.
- Lash: Damage variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
- Locust Swarm: New power! Charge up hold and DoT.
- Locust Swarm: No longer fragile to its own damage.
- Pestilence: Now reduces your foes Toxic damage resistence by 1% for each stack of Poison on them.
- Rebirth: Base Recharge Time reduced to 5 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
- Rebirth: Buff/Debuff applied upon resurrection now lasts 20s, down from 30s. Damage dealt changed to 5% of your maximum health, instead of a flat number. Health gained when defeating an enemy increased substantially.
- Vile Lariat: Now deals +3% damage for each stack of Poison on the target.
- Vicious Cyclone: Knock tables now scale with rank.
- Vicious Cyclone: Now deals +3% damage for each stack of Poison on the target.
- Vicious Cyclone: Damage variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
- Vicious Cyclone: Vortex Technique: Added Enrage interaction to description.
- Vicious Cyclone: Vortex Technique: Added auto description.
Bestial:
- Aspect of the Bestial: The icon for the Bestial Strength buff has been changed to help differentiate it from the Aspect of the Bestial icon.
Unarmed:
- Leaping Uppercut: The Knock Up on this power was not being affected by resistance properly, and thus would successfully Knock Up more than intended when a target was not yet immune to Knocks. This has been corrected, and it should now be resisted normally.
Items:
- Aftershock: Viper Rifles: These items have been updated slightly. They now have a 5 target maximum, and their targeting has been updated to better match their appearance (cones reduced to 30 degree arcs for most, and the Polson Rifle has been changed to a Cylinder attack with 100 foot range). Some of the damage types have changed. In addition, they all now properly display how much damage they do in the tooltip.
Supernatural:
- Venomous Breath: Damage variance reduced from 20% to 7.5%.
- Supernatural Power: Energy grant should now be more responsive, and should always grant Energy when a power activation reduces your current Energy below the stated threshold.
- Supernatural Power: Energy return now triggers at 15%, up from 10%.
- Supernatural Power: The amount of Energy returned now scales with your Recovery.
- Supernatural Power: Should no longer count as 2 powers for the purposes of unlocking some powers.
Sorcery:
- Circle of Arcane Power: Will no longer provide you with multiple stacks of Energy Form. This should have no noticeable effect, except that it will no longer display additional buff stacks on you.
- Circle of Arcane Power: The ticks provided by this power can no longer be Dodged.
- Circle of Ebon Wrath: The ticks provided by this power can no longer be Dodged.
- Circle of Radiant Glory: Now provides a buff icon while you are in it.
UI:
- Mini-map New Feature: New options to show/hide the mini-map buttons. You will find these under the mini-map settings button (small gear icon) - "Always show mini-map Buttons" (Default) - Alway shows the mini-map buttons. "Show mini-map buttons only on mouse over" - Shows the buttons when you mouse over the map. Unchecking both options allows you to always hide the mini-map buttons.
- Mini-map Change: Removed the Mission Tracker toggle button as it is not contained within the Mission Tracker.
- Mission Tracker Change: Moved the mission tracker toggle button to always be associated with it instead of the mini-map.
- Mini-map Fix: Clicking on the Crime Computer (SOCRATES) now toggles the window on/off correctly.
- Mini-map Fix: Buttons no longer shift their position when you press one of them.
- Mini-map Fix: Mail button no longer jumps to the wrong location when the new mail notification is active.
- Mini-map Fix: Mission Tracker no longer overlaps with mini-map.
- Misc. Fix: Button style on the first time popup window changed to the intended style as it was using the incorrect style for them.
Post edited by Archived Post on
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Comments
Nice!
"Leaping Uppercut: The Knock Up on this power was not being affected by resistance properly, and thus would successfully Knock Up more than intended when a target was not yet immune to Knocks. This has been corrected, and it should now be resisted normally."
Awwww yeaah.
"Circle of Arcane Power: The ticks provided by this power can no longer be Dodged."
Guess we can't trigger Bountiful Chi Resurgence's advantage from this anymore
Also i see no reasons for Devour Essence nerf, considering that stuff like Ego Weaponry outclasses it in every aspect.
And again, 50% defence penetration on dots means absolutely nothing, just because idf still exists :P
The notes say shield penetration, not defense penetration. Hopefully this means it penetrates Invulnerability and IDF.
Indeed! That, and each stack now making each damage tick bigger (instead of more ticks) should help vs Invuln/IDF.
Any chance you guys might consider doing a Bestial Supernatural pass together/after the Infernal pass since well you are kinda there already? You know, just to be done with it as a whole rather than coming back to it later. IMO it's best to do it now than go to another framework. I mean bestial is not bad if you go outside the set but.... As you guys noticed with Infernal DoTs are not really good (i would say pointless but...) and the fact that it works on a tri-synergy mechanic (bleed/fear/enrage) does not help it. IMO drop bleed and work on a rage/fear mechanic and add the bleed stuff to SB. You know just a thought
Hopefully there is a stack limit. Since I don't PvP, I'm thinking of the zombies at each Blood Moon Undead hero site. I know I've gotten MANY stacks of something poison-ish from them.
oh... ego weaponry is next... no doubt about it. Just because Im falling in love with it.
Keep the good work, Devs, and thanks for listening to us!
And... could we hope that half shield penetration will be applied to currently defence-only penetrating powers too?
Agreed, and btw, there are NO melle powers that apply poison currently, so if you go in brawler role with pestilence, u're either forced to use that new aoe maintain, that now does pathetic damage thx to brawler, or just forget about poison\aspect stacks\pestilence stacks. And that's all considering DE was nerfed :P
Edit: How about an active offense that gives each attack a chance to proc poison?
Oh, and since I have you attention for the momment...
How's putting Aspect of The Dragon, Aspect of the Celestial, and Aspect of the Inferno back into the game coming along? You're making changes to the chain powers...so it only make sense. More options are always good. Thanks in advance.
Devour Essence: Damage reduced ~8%.
Devour Essence: Damage variance increased from 0% to 5%, and Healing variance reduced from 10% to 5%.
Why is a nerf to Devour Essence necessary?
Ugh, such a headache. I guess Infernal doesn't have much of a synergy with melee. Ironic considering Beastial is its counterpart. So much for being useful in that regard. But there's an idea.... melee attacks that apply poison... hrmmmm.... I've always wanted a dagger powerset that applied something like that... but I digress...
While I've never used it personally, I'm wondering this as well.
This also while we are on this train.
This is the description for invuln. The entire purpose of the power is to make you almost immune to the smaller attacks so you just worry about the big hits. If you basicly make hordes of attacks ignore this purpose your changing the purpose of ivn.
How about things like Toxic Nanites and Defile - Plague Bearer apply stacks of poison, to spread some synergy? Assuming that the Poison debuff gets proper scaling...
Toxic Nanites: 6/8/10 stacks, based on rank. Apply and refresh.
Plague Bearer: 0 to 2 stacks, based on charge. Apply/stack only, not refresh.
Nice to see a touch on the Chains, but...still kind of hollow in that department.
So true.
Invuln is still highly effective against maintains and taps, which are things like bullet sprays and other quick but weak attacks that are only really effective en-mass. And now Dots (well one of them anyway) has a niche on the attack VS defence chart that isn't "ok" or "totally rubbish." Now if that worked for other dots too.
Viper's Fangs.
Granted you have to get the advantage, but holy crap it is good for applying poison.
But that said, I would definitely like if the poison mechanic was shared with more powers. Heck, you might even be able to give Pestilence an Advantage that allows it to make all of your attacks proc poison.
Spamming full charges of the new T0 on a level 40 test dummy with a character who's 35 resulted in the test dummy being mostly dead before I actually hit 10 stacks, at which point Pestilence will still ticking for about 1/5th more damage. Pretty much everything I fought in the battle station was lucky to have 3 stacks before death. Poison is pretty much still inconsequential outside of stacking up the Aspect.
Also, it's still really irritating that Aspect of the Infernal only scales off of a mechanic found almost exclusively in its own set and even more irritating that only certain powers within the set stack it. Bestial has the second problem and TK has the first one, but at least with TK Ego Leech is REALLY good and pretty much everything in the set applies it.
Disapointed with the lack of change to the function of Infernal Blast. The skill's advantage would be better if it hit more targets for each stack of poison on the original target. The way it is now feels more like a Poor Man's Chain Lightning.
The changes to Pestilence are nice, but for straight damage, Fiery Form still beats it.
Also, and here is by far my biggest beef with the way Aspect of the Infernal now works. You make it proc off of Poison stacks, but the only skills that poison are pretty much the EB and the new ones.
You added no poison abilities to any of the skills that could have really benefited from it, like Venomous Breath. A cone Poison stacker would help build up Aspect alot faster. There is no such thing as Poison on the Chains. There is no poison on Defile or Condem.
Its a pain in the *beep* to get Poison on with the system you have, and the only way to do it at range (Infernal Blast) you can't get more than 2 stacks on a full charge shot.
Add Poison Abilities to more powers in the set
For the same reason the whole review was necessary .. just to add some crappy redundant powers and nerf
the only really good power of set :mad:
Sorry for beeing a little harsh this time, but Devour is really my most favorite power from infernal, and i'm really
not happy if that gets nerfed
Nice!, I presume thats the one from the become device?, that was quite fun!.
Re: the mini-map changes; thats all great and it sounds like there are some useful changes there, but is there any way of making the mini-map scale with the box and not go off-centre?. I am constantly having to drag to re-centre it on resizing the box manually so as to avoid the black borders.
OK I figured out what to do here:
Use Epidemic twice to build up a big stack of ten in as little as 6 seconds (oh wow that advantage).
Then tap Infernal blast to refresh the stack all at once, and tap it again in about 12 seconds. In those 12 seconds, use defile, and whatever power you want to keep up infernal strength.
It's an incredibly low maintenance set up. Your other powers applying poison are there to keep up infernal strength.
ALSO a bug!
The Poison from R2 Command Animals is doing 0 damage no matter how high it stacks.
Not sure if it applies to other ranks.
How to explain. The trigger for Supernatural is basicaly "out of energy". To get energy back before that (out of energy), power you use has to be maintain and a dirt cheap maintain. That would be Breath. Devour and Epidemic cost more, so before you trigger Supernatural, you get "out of energy" and maintain stops. To prevent that, you can boost END so that "at 15%" is higher. But it has to be pretty high END or you will not noticed the difference as its only 15% of END stat.
So why not just tap a single Energy Builder? You can say it triggers on "out of energy" and scales with END.
Atlest "old" one didn't needed REC as superstat
Well, its a comment or a question: when and why would I pick Supernatural Power and not some other energy unlock if I know I can have only one and I have Freeform?
Also, the chain attacks should have some chance to apply poison.
EDIT:
BUG: All the powers Advantages listed in the Patch Notes as having an "auto description" added have an "UNTRANSLATED:" type error where I presume that "auto description" is supposed to be. I'm not sure what this is, and what other powers might be affected, but for convenience these are the one I refer to:
...
Separately: I like the Minimap and associated changes a lot so far.
I will mention that I do think the relatively new "Hideout" button is unclear and indistinct...maybe something like an arrow going through that "door/portal" type shape, reoriented vertically, might be better?
Perhaps I should offer a reminder that the "C" C-store icon could still use a new look, as well.
It says "Weaker Foes", not "Smaller Attacks". I suppose invuln could be updated to provide scaling resistance based on who the attacker is, 99% vs henchmen down to 9% vs players. I'd be down with that...
Yeah, no.
By the way, are DEMON villain and master villain sorceresses-types still firing off Power Armour Chest Beams that do not grant a stack of knock resistance when you're hit by it?
EDIT: Yup, Maleficias and Inner Circle Members still do not apply knock resistance.
This is a straight buff to Supernatural Power, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. It now procs sooner, and the amount of Energy returned now gets larger with your Recovery. If you don't invest any points in Recovery, this is still a buff as it will proc sooner. However, Recovery itself is supposed to provide an increase to Energy gain, and was not properly doing so with this power.
Supernatural Power is still unique as an Energy Unlock power, as it does not require a specific stat to really work - most of the other unlocks start with a much lower energy kickback and scale with a stat other than Recovery to increase that up, and then Recovery also affects how much energy is returned (because that is a function of Recovery).
Devour Essence has been a problematic power for a long time, and has been buffed and nerfed multiple times trying to find the right place for it. This change was because it was doing slightly more damage per Energy than our normal tables allow for. We're still looking at the power, but wanted to get it to the proper baseline before continuing.
Compared to what?
DE is a non-physical melee power which right away reduces the types of buffs that can be applied to it. That means while it might be doing more base damage than other melee powers, it can't be buffed up as much. The passives that buff it (ice and fire) are a really risky choice for a melee toon. You can't use focus. You can't use aggressor. You could use infernal stacks, but why would you choose to use a melee attack versus defile when you are going to be way squishy? Of course, if the goal is to make another power like Eye Beams...
Why is epidemic a 15' range attack? The closest thing the new powers have to something useful is made suicidal. A ranged toxic toon doesn't want to be 15' from their target(s). They want to be 80-100' feet from their target. Instead of PBAoE, make this a 100' ranged power with a small radius at the target for effect. I do like the rest of the power, tho.
Locust Swarm is worthless. Charge up holds fail miserably since the F2P changes to the whole hold/resist mechanic. While the best solution would be to completely rework all those F2P changes, an easier solution would be to just make this a maintain with the same toxic DoT while maintained.
Infernal Blast is weak. I get that it's primary function is all about poison, but poison needs work. Why not keep the effect the same, but look at how Ego Leech gets applied and maintained in the TK powers and the variety of tools TK users have to work with Ego Leech. Poison needs the same kind of stuff going on to make it a useful new mechanic (again, tho, keep its current effect but look at the powers that can apply/refresh poison)
Pestilence change will be cool if you can get poison working decently.
I like that infernal will have chains versus toxic blasts going on once the new powers are added. Gives players more options for building thematic toons.
I'm all for more defense/shield penetration powers. Please make poison a good mechanic
That resolves one debate I've had. So DPE is a major consideration, after all.
I think what he is referring to is how much END is required for Supernatural Power to be used. For low energy maintains and channeled abilities, it performs passably. But when it comes to big beefy attacks like Defile or Massacre, its just.. bad. And here's why:
On Live, when I tap Massacre (33 END with 85 INT) on my STR/END character, I need minimum 330 END in order to get it to reasonably proc. Otherwise I wind up in unfortunate situations where I am bottoming out, spending my last Massacre and THEN it procs. During this time I will probably auto-attack twice and between that and the proc, I'll be able to Massacre for a single swing more. After that, I spend time auto-attacking (generally to about 50-60% END given how much END I have) as it won't proc again for a short while.
Even in the PTR now, while reduced, I'm still experiencing the same kind of bottoming out.. which becomes even more pronounced the less END I have, given the way it is tied to END.
By the way, are there any plans to make Supernatural Power competitive with Molecular Self-Assembly? Between the power and its supporting stat, its kind of run away with the.. everything.. when it comes to energy return and its versatility in builds is unmatched. Conversely, Supernatural Power quite limited in that it only serves as an energy return for two power trees. Arguably, that makes it more limited than Spirit Reverberation.
Actually Focus stacks do buff DE just as Enrage stacks do. However, DE does not get the same melee buff from strength that other melee attacks do. I would be fine if they took out the meager healing component from DE and buffed it's damage back up.
Also, as others have mentioned, building up sufficient poison stacks takes too long and is too cumbersome. Every infernal power should have a chance of applying poison.
Umm... But the only real reason to take Devour Essence was for the healing benefit. (Single target damage, healing, and Crippling Challenge on the same power makes for a very good tanking tool.) So you'd prefer Cryptic to make the power useless to most people in exchange for a small damage increase? I really can't see how that situation is any better. Especially since Cryptic buffed the healing value of DE within the last few months.
DE actually does very good damage right now on live and can serve as the primary attack in a brawler melee build. If they nerf it's damage then I would have a hard time justifying taking it over other stronger melee maintains. As far as the healing buff, I haven't noticed much of a difference so it really wasn't that significant.
I guess some people may take it for tanking but I honestly haven't seen that many use it for the purpose that you are describing.
Can we being back the old "Aspects".
And maybe in the process change the god awful "Aspec/Bestial" graphic while we're at it?
I'd like it if they just did a Supernatural Bestial review after the Infernal. They are already in the set so they might as well fix it.
If this is the problem, I would rather you increase the energy cost. We have better ways of handling energy issues than we have of buffing DE.
Really though, I've been playing with a DE toon a lot lately, and while DE is decent, I've melted villains far faster with Conflag or Sword Cyclone, which are AoE's to boot.
My infernal is based, as much as possible, around chains and this feels like chains are really going to be pretty much pointless (or at least have little synergy with the aspect, etc.).
Stacking DoT's seems about 95% pointless in PvE. Even playing on Elite, Henchman and Villains die within one swing of the chains (cyclone); MV's die with the usage of 1 or 2 powers after that. The only time I can see stacking DoT's as effective in Champions is against SOME Supervillains and Cosmics. (I've felt this way about my Single Blade character as well - he's probably just about the weakest of all my characters; the bleeds just aren't worth it in the vast majority of situations).
The last time I felt really concerned about a framework pass like this was TK - I do feel like you listened to player feedback and really turned it around (I LOVE my TK ranged character and my TK blades character is a bit more fun).
Bottom line for me is that this game just doesn't support DoT's the way other (much slower paced) MMO's do. I loved my Warlock way back when I played WoW - DoT's allowed him to take down some ridiculous stuff (ditto for Shaman/Druid in EQ). That approach just doesn't work in a game where you defeat the enemy (actually, CROWDS of enemies) within 8 seconds of pressing a button.
Please reconsider basing this framework around stacking poison. Pestilence, to me, is the gaping wound in the current set (I played around with it and couldn't believe how it paled compared to every other offensive passive in the game).
Defile>Plague Bearer:
- Maybe add a "The damage increases as target's health gets lower." to match it up with Pestilence's DoT.
- Maybe also add the 1% Toxic resistance reduction for each stack of Poison, also to line it up with Pestilence's effect.
Misc. Suggestion:
This set might benefit having some sorta of Active Offense click power that's both complimentary to Pestilence though also can be used as an alternative for those who don't want the "insect infestation effect". Like possibly an Infernal version of Shadow Shroud FX wise.
lol, yeah, that "meager" healing has kept my Ebon Destruction toon alive more times than I can count...