The Ninja Nerfs

mrhinkypunk

I am certainly not a fan of nerf's, but when ninja's start to carry them out things start to become worrying.

So what exactly has been ninja nerfed I hear you asking. I don't really know how much has been hit but here is what I have heard.

Sigils of weakness slow down less.

Perception on smoke grenade is considerably less.

Stealth sight (for PvP) APPARENTLY by the SG Altered Ego's has been affected in some way and is working differently.

I don't know if anyone has found anything else?

aetam1

So far I haven't noticed anything but I also was not looking for anything. Besides that, how do you know these changes are intended nerfs and not unintended bugs?

I would probably try a bug report first.

nepht

mrhinkypunk wrote: »

I am certainly not a fan of nerf's, but when ninja's start to carry them out things start to become worrying.

So what exactly has been ninja nerfed I hear you asking. I don't really know how much has been hit but here is what I have heard.

Sigils of weakness slow down less.

Perception on smoke grenade is considerably less.

Stealth sight (for PvP) APPARENTLY by the SG Altered Ego's has been affected in some way and is working differently.

I don't know if anyone has found anything else?

I know smokes nades has been screwed with and fighting claws DPS seems to down a bit.

mrhinkypunk

Is it me or has mini drive's snare been changed too?

blkjackwilliams

It's still the old version of the PTS. I wonder if the changes were ever on there.

That would be...unfortunate if they push a bunch of untested, unanounced changes, and then also have all the issues they had with the recent patch's release.

Though, I remember seeing one of the Smoke grenade ranks giving -80% now, on live. If that's R2(I can't remember off the top of my head which rank), it could be another decimal place error, like they had with R1 Night Warrior.

ariesmajor

I noticed both my toons that have int as primary can see waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than they used to for stealth users in pvp.

crypticbuxom

And this is why when we are asked to test we should be told about every change that happens because just about ANYTHING changed can cause serious issues. What if the smoke grenade stealth nerf was the cause of disconnects because of character rendering issues?

Don't expect Cryptic to be transparent especially for things we need to know.

rugrothrumbor

All I know is that there are some changes going on right now.

theravenforce

Pets seem to die faster, I find it quite peculiar actually.

Techna runs AoRP (91%) and has had serious issues keeping pets alive since the patch. I am not sure why this is though. Nothing on my end bar dodge has changed and as far as I know, pets cannot dodge so that can't be it.

Ebon Sigils do seem a bit weaker.

Personal Force Field is having major issues atm, it's threshold is continually changing and seems to have regained in combat regen nerfing.

Shamballah Vampires in VB seem to have trouble obeying minor crowd control effects like Stuns or Roots. They are Master Villain Ranked Foes and I have seen them attack whilst under the effects of placates, stuns and sleep effects. Similar to how the first iteration of FATAL Err0r Intranet Deployment on PTS had critters flat out disobeying Crowd Control effects.

HOWEVER, having said that I do not believe these "nerfs" were intended, and may simply be an oversight.

spinnytop

Remember when they first added crafting tables to Monster Island?


Then they started blood moon right... but for blood moon they had accidentally used an older version of monster island...

so those new crafting tables suddenly dissappeared.


So yeah, wouldn't be the first time they pushed something to live that was built on an older version of the game

theravenforce

Also there doesn't seem to be any Super Villain Ranked Dummies in Monster Islands PH, nor VB's...

agentnx5

Recent ninja-nerfs I've noticed that are NOT in the patch notes, sorry for any repeats:

• Ego Surge's Nimble Mind seems to have had a diminishing returns cap applied to it. This sucks and was not what we've kept asking for: that is that it be "CON -or- INT whichever is higher", not CON alone. Instead they just silently added dimishing returns, which burns all those people who spent money on high rank CON mods.
  
  
• Drop rate of special boss (i.e.: Draconis, Ripper, Mindslayer, Valerian, Medusa, Foxbat, etc.) costume unlocks was ninja-nerfed a few months after On Alert, and then was repeatedly re-nerfed more in later months. This nerf applies to both Alerts and the normal instances where you confront these bosses.
  
  
• Ebon Sigils had their movement redux slowing effect reduced, although the base damage redux is still solid so this isn't all that bad of a thing really. But it DOES need to be in the patch notes, damn it!
  
  
• INT's stealth sight seems to be back up to where it used to be before the Night Warrior patch that introduced the stealth revisions, but once again this would be alright if it was just noted in the damn patch notes!
  
  
• Smoke grenades seems to have had their perception debuff decreased, although to be honest I don't recall what the numbers were supposed to be
  
  
• Freeforms have a hidden damage cap that Archetypes don't seem to. A good example is Sniper Rifle where the most you can hit with a Freeform is around 20,000 damage whereas a Soldier archetype can hit as high as 27,000 damage. This is very discouraging to people who you want to encourage to subscribe, I'd recommend removing these caps. I don't know when this change was silently added, but evidence in support of showing it exists has become clearer over time.
  
  
• Critical severity on STR and EGO spec trees was reduced by ~5%. At least it's better than the 10% that was on the PTS, but it's still BS and anger-inducing for two reasons:
  1. Not in the patch notes
  2. We need and increase/buff to severity not a decrease. Critical chance and severity should see-saw. If critical chance % gets a lower point where diminishing returns kicks in, then severity needs a higher point for it's diminishing returns. This is the fair thing to do.
  If less criticals, then criticals should count for more by hitting harder.
  If more criticals, then criticals should not be as important by not hitting as hard.
  
  
• Vindicator's focused strikes and mass destruction specializations are not giving nearly the critical chance boost that they used to. This makes it almost imperative to switch over to the Avenger spec, which of course is great if you use the Offense stat primarily, but not if you're a build focused on critical hits. I thought we were going to be given a choice Gentleman Crush? Isn't that what your dev blog about the changes said? :mad:

theravenforce wrote: »

Also there doesn't seem to be any Super Villain Ranked Dummies in Monster Islands PH, nor VB's...

Confirmed. This is either a bug or an oversight.

somebob

agentnx5 wrote: »

Recent ninja-nerfs I've noticed that are NOT in the patch notes, sorry for any repeats:

• Ego Surge's Nimble Mind seems to have had a diminishing returns cap applied to it. This sucks and was not what we've kept asking for: that is that it be "CON -or- INT whichever is higher", not CON alone. Instead they just silently added dimishing returns, which burns all those people who spent money on high rank CON mods.

Changed because the formula was changed determining how you get Crit Chance. See here:

http://co.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1012441

[*]Drop rate of special boss (i.e.: Draconis, Ripper, Mindslayer, Valerian, Medusa, Foxbat, etc.) costume unlocks was ninja-nerfed a few months after On Alert, and then was repeatedly re-nerfed more in later months. This nerf applies to both Alerts and the normal instances where you confront these bosses.

Unknown on this one, but it has always been absurdly low to begin with (since On Alert launched).

[*]Ebon Sigils had their movement redux slowing effect reduced, although the base damage redux is still solid so this isn't all that bad of a thing really. But it DOES need to be in the patch notes, damn it!

[*]INT's stealth sight seems to be back up to where it used to be before the Night Warrior patch that introduced the stealth revisions, but once again this would be alright if it was just noted in the damn patch notes!

[*]Smoke grenades seems to have had their perception debuff decreased, although to be honest I don't recall what the numbers were supposed to be

Have not heard of this at all, nor have I heard that any of these stats/powers were touched. You have proof that it got changed?

[*]Freeforms have a hidden damage cap that Archetypes don't seem to. A good example is Sniper Rifle where the most you can hit with a Freeform is around 20,000 damage whereas a Soldier archetype can hit as high as 27,000 damage. This is very discouraging to people who you want to encourage to subscribe, I'd recommend removing these caps. I don't know when this change was silently added, but evidence in support of showing it exists has become clearer over time.

Long, long, long, long, LONG (long) time bug. Ever since On Alert launched this bug has existed. Basically there's two different diminishing returns formulas for damage. One for Freeforms, one for ATs. ATs have a lesser of one.

Last I've heard, the devs (and Gentleman_Crush) have reported that yes, this is a bug and they know about it. But they have no idea how or why it's happening nor how to fix it.

[*]Critical severity on STR and EGO spec trees was reduced by ~5%. At least it's better than the 10% that was on the PTS, but it's still BS and anger-inducing for two reasons:
1. Not in the patch notes
2. We need and increase/buff to severity not a decrease. Critical chance and severity should see-saw. If critical chance % gets a lower point where diminishing returns kicks in, then severity needs a higher point for it's diminishing returns. This is the fair thing to do.
If less criticals, then criticals should count for more by hitting harder.
If more criticals, then criticals should not be as important by not hitting as hard.

[*]Vindicator's focused strikes and mass destruction specializations are not giving nearly the critical chance boost that they used to. This makes it almost imperative to switch over to the Avenger spec, which of course is great if you use the Offense stat primarily, but not if you're a build focused on critical hits. I thought we were going to be given a choice Gentleman Crush? Isn't that what your dev blog about the changes said? :mad:

Again, see here: http://co.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1012441 - the formulas got changed.

eatmores

Ego Surge - Nimble Mind and Vindicator's focused strikes and mass destruction give direct crit chance not rating. The changes to the crit rating curves have nothing do with these bonuses.
Unless there's been a huge stealth change to how these work.

kallethen

I hypothesize that the Nimble Mind advantage calculates it's crit chance bonus by putting Con through a conversion to critical chance rating and then put that into the DR formula to output the percentage it adds.