FC.31.20160512.10 - Bug Fixes

kaiserin · May 2016

FC.31.20160512.0
Enrage Forms

Aspect of the Bestial can now gain stacks of Enrage whenever you apply, refresh or rupture a bleed or poison.
Fixed a bug where Aspect of the Bestial was giving Rage stacks when knocking targets.
Enrage's duration no longer scales with anything and is a flat 20 seconds to bring it in line with other forms.
Updated Endorphin Rush's description to to state what it scales off of. This is just a description update.

Martial Arts Forms

Form of the Swordsman can now gain stacks of Focus whenever you apply, refresh or rupture a bleed.
Focus stacks granted by Form of the Swordsman now has an internal cooldown of 4 seconds.
Updated Form of the Swordsman's tooltip to state what ranking up the power actually does. This is just a description update.
Updated the Cut where it Counts tooltip to state how much the heal debuff applies for. This is just a description update.
Updated Focus and Rage form tooltips to state how long they last.

Other

Eviscerate, Bite's Scent of Blood and Rabies advantages, Infernal Blast, Infernal Blasts's Virulent Propagation advantage and Dragon's Bite will now only refresh your bleeds and/or poisons, not everyones.
Tiger's Bite will now only rupture your Shredded debuff, not everyone's.
Fixed a bug where Thrash could gain additional healing from bleeds that were not your own.
Slightly reduced the amount of healing Thrash gives per bleed.
Fixed a bug where Thrash was doing an additional hit of 0 slashing damage.
Fixed a bug where Devour Essence's snare did not increase with rank.
Pounce's Furious Rush advantage now refreshes and applies the Furious buff.
Removed the damage bonus from the Furious Rush advantage.
Furor Venenum advantage now has a 20% chance to apply a stun against a non-bleeding/poisoned target, and a 100% chance against a bleeding/poisoned target.
Fixed a bug where Deep Wound wasn't completely stopping you from applying bleeds.
Fixed a bug where Open Palm Strike's Focused Chi Blast advantage caused the power to deal 0 damage of every damage type.
The shield effect from Containment field (vehicle and player version) no longer affects Onslaught Villains and Cosmic ranked enemies.

Misc Changes

Fixed a bug where the Orbs from the Nightmare Colossus open mission were not properly granting participation points.
The Demolisher's pbaoe knock to no longer ignores line of sight and now grants knock resistance stacks.

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

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aiqa · May 2016

In my opinion the enrage duration change completely sucks. Not every build is filled with powers that proc enrage. For HW the required debuff doesn't, then Eruption can get easily interrupted by someone walking out of range or dying under your nose, making the power not do any damage or knock but still go on cooldown, vicious descent needing adv point just for its (still bugged) knockdown. So my HW build can now easily lose it's enrage stacks unless I go out of my way to refresh them with a single target knockback.

This was balanced out by MA forms and Concentration and Compassion being far easier to stacks, and for the MA forms to have quite a few options how you want to proc them.

squirrelloid · May 2016

Absolutely terrible enrage change. I have no words for how terrible a change it is. Just more 'CO hates melee characters'. You can be a ranged character, take the toggle that works with every ranged power ever, and just need to get within 50' or 100' of the next target to refresh your stacks in 20s. Or you can be a melee hero and have to close to melee distance and then do a knock to refresh your stacks in 20s. These two things are totally equivalent.

The differences in how toggles triggered mean that there were reasons for differences in buff duration that made sense and deserve to be preserved. Are we all supposed to go play ranged characters, because they're the only ones who have a toggle that actually works reasonably now? Same duration makes no sense when one toggle is 'use any ranged attack' and the other toggle is 'use a specific type of attack' (generally in melee range).

But nothing we say is going to matter - I do have to wonder, do you actually want people playing this game in 6 months?

Why not change the other toggles to work more like enrage?

dakrushmor · May 2016

Nupe, nupe, nupe & nupe!.. You call that bug fixes? That's just a weak as heck!
It shud be this way:
1. Vehicle taunt reverted to its unbreakable version.
2. Fixed a bug, that prevented non-subbed players from tinting their powers.
3. Released radioactive powerset.
{OVERRIDECODE1_DUMMY0}

theravenforce · May 2016

Question...will melee knocks be adjusted to grant more stacks of enrage then?

Because this is sort of going to be a bit like a lesser version of the Manipulator nerf.

Not a lot of people use Manipulator but a whole lot of people use Enrage...and this is going to be a very distasteful change IMO.

Unknown · May 2016

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kaiserin · May 2016

As was stated with the Manipulator change, the Enrage change was done to prevent the form from essentially being a second passive. Like any form that triggers off of a specific action, players are expected to have something in their build to trigger it reliably in order to maintain it.

If you feel there is a gap in certain frameworks where this form is present (Might, HW, Earth, Bestial), feel free to bring those to light and offer suggestions.

aiqa · May 2016

For HW, if Eruption only goes on cooldown on a successful hit, or gets a reduced cooldown, this wouldn't be a big problem for me (or for Devastator AT). But with a 20 seconds enrage duration and a 7 seconds Eruption cooldown (when counting some CDR), keeping up enrage with eruption is far to fragile.

To keep enrage up while using AoE I'd regularly have to go out of my way and use a third power (single target knockback in my case) just for the purpose of refreshing enrage. I don't think that is how forms should behave.

Unknown · May 2016

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jaazaniah1 · May 2016

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

chaosdrgnz43 · May 2016

Oh, boop. Well, it was fun using AotB while it lasted. Gonna switch back to Enrage then. I'm disappointed that enrage will only last 20s though. It's not that easy getting/maintaining stacks.

kaiserin · May 2016

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

This is intended, not a bug.

squirrelloid · May 2016

kaizerin said:
As was stated with the Manipulator change, the Enrage change was done to prevent the form from essentially being a second passive. Like any form that triggers off of a specific action, players are expected to have something in their build to trigger it reliably in order to maintain it.

If you feel there is a gap in certain frameworks where this form is present (Might, HW, Earth, Bestial), feel free to bring those to light and offer suggestions.

This doesn't even begin to address the stark differences in toggle triggers. So, concentration is still pretty much a second passive, but enrage isn't now. Yay?

aiqa said:
For HW, if Eruption only goes on cooldown on a successful hit, or gets a reduced cooldown, this wouldn't be a big problem for me (or for Devastator AT). But with a 20 seconds enrage duration and a 7 seconds Eruption cooldown (when counting some CDR), keeping up enrage with eruption is far to fragile.

To keep enrage up I'd regularly have to go out of my way and use a power (single target knockback in my case) just for the purpose of refreshing enrage. I don't think that is how forms should behave.

You know, I protested the Eruption change at the time, and no one listened. And then this happened. I am shocked. Shocked I say. Shocked.

kallethen · May 2016

kaizerin wrote: »

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

This is intended, not a bug.

Very unfortunate. IMO, it's a slap in our faces.

EDIT:

To elaborate, I would like to get the auras for possible future characters whom the auras in question would be icing on the costume cake. Auras that are bound to character are near worthless to me, thus I won't bother playing the event for them. So if your intention was to get us playing the event more, this fails in that goal.

Unknown · May 2016

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violetnychus · May 2016

kaizerin wrote: »

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

This is intended, not a bug.

Why?

Do you think that would cause people to participate more? It will not.

aiqa · May 2016

Another option which would work for HW, would be to make the knockdown on vicious descent an innate property (and fix it so it doesn't knockback so far). All lunges have two innate effects, a stun/knock/root and a snare. Vicious descent applies reckless but doesn't do anything else, it does do high damage for a lunge and AoE at that, but that is balanced out by it's long cooldown and higher tier.

baelogventure · May 2016

20 seconds is plenty of time to build another stack of Enrage, either through Knocks, Bleeds, or Poison.

If you're seriously having trouble with Enrage falling off, then you either need a faster travel power, like Athletics or Mach Speed, or you need to take a lunge, since Lunges reach out to 60', or you need to take a ranged knock/bleed/poison for your Enrage if you feel that strongly about it.

I made a Bestial character, decided to put Vile Lariat w/ the Kyoketsu Shoge Adv for a ranged 100% Bleed AND it's a Knock To. It's called taking a Utility power. Don't see the problem.

So what if cutscenes drop stacks back to 1? Every form with stacks has to deal with that.

Now, the AT thing is a problem, because if the Behemoth doesn't take Roomsweeper, they have no real way of keeping up Enrage stacks until they get Uppercut/Haymaker, which is a bit of a problem. However, a Knockdown Adv could be added to Thunderclap or to Demolish (Or both) to help the Behemoth with it's Enrage stacking.

riverocean · May 2016

Why do people think that keeping a constant 8-stacks of a damage boosting toggle is a right? Look. Stuff is getting fixed and balanced. There will still be builds capable of keeping up 8-stacked enrage. It just won't be easy or something you can do without compromise.

Most people will still do more than enough dps than is needed. This isn't the end of the world.

baelogventure said:

Now, the AT thing is a problem, because if the Behemoth doesn't take Roomsweeper, they have no real way of keeping up Enrage stacks until they get Uppercut/Haymaker, which is a bit of a problem. However, a Knockdown Adv could be added to Thunderclap or to Demolish (Or both) to help the Behemoth with it's Enrage stacking.

This is a great suggestion for the Behemoth.

Unknown · May 2016

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sanguineviper · May 2016

Since when has keeping 8 stacks of any toggle in combat been difficult at all for any build actually designed around using whichever form they chose? The only time I ever lose stacks is because of cutscenes (which will never not be infuriating), or dying.

Sure, I guess some ATs have issues with it, but they've always been exceptionally poorly designed. And we're seeing reworkings of them recently, so I would assume we can expect them to actually be patched up so they at least have a consistent means of keeping their forms stacked.

kamokami · May 2016

kaizerin said:
If you feel there is a gap in certain frameworks where this form is present (Might, HW, Earth, Bestial), feel free to bring those to light and offer suggestions.

I don't see an issue with keeping up Enrage with the exception to the ATs. Those will likely need to be looked at before the change goes live.

avianos · May 2016

kaizerin wrote: »

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

This is intended, not a bug.

REALLY? Character bound auras on a game where it's (or at least WAS) Alt Friendly?
and despite the majority of the forum user's feedback who want the auras account wide bound, you guys are STILL not going to change it?
Screw this event

Unknown · May 2016

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jellycupsowbug · May 2016

kaizerin said:

Martial Arts Forms
Updated Form of the Swordsman's tooltip to state what ranking up the power actually does. This is just a description update.

~~Actually, the effect of ranking the power has also changed.~~ I tried it out on live, and it's already like this.

Form of the Swordsman doesn't have its 20% and 40% chance to gain two Focus stacks at a time at rank two or three. Has it always been this way? I looked for changes in the notes, and did a search for bugs, but found nothing.

The other Martial Arts forms don't seem to lack this ability. Should we expect it to change in the future?

aiqa · May 2016

kamokami said:

kaizerin said:
If you feel there is a gap in certain frameworks where this form is present (Might, HW, Earth, Bestial), feel free to bring those to light and offer suggestions.
I don't see an issue with keeping up Enrage with the exception to the ATs. Those will likely need to be looked at before the change goes live.

Before this change you could reliably use Eruption to keep up Enrage either in a rotation with Skewer or Arc of Ruin. That is still easy as long as Eruption doesn't missfire for any reason, but it's far more fragile. Just 1 stun or knock at the wrong moment or have someone kill your target from under your nose, or a bit of missmanagement with max melee range, will end up with having Eruption available when Enrage has a 3 seconds duration left, at best.

Of course you could go out of your way to then add/use another attack that procs Enrage, but going out of your way to proc your in-set form is not really in line with how forms work and proc in general.

sigmaseven0 · May 2016

kaizerin said:
As was stated with the Manipulator change, the Enrage change was done to prevent the form from essentially being a second passive. Like any form that triggers off of a specific action, players are expected to have something in their build to trigger it reliably in order to maintain it.

If you feel there is a gap in certain frameworks where this form is present (Might, HW, Earth, Bestial), feel free to bring those to light and offer suggestions.

With all due respect you also said this in that same post.

kaizerin said:

Rage still has its duration scaling from con from the stone ages, and perhaps other forms can get something similar in the future.

Its not unreasonable to interpret this as you suggesting that other forms would be brought in line with enrage, not the other way around.

Forms that are activated by general default combat action like concentration and Form of the Tempest (which can even be proced by your energy builder), cannot be treated the same as forms that proc from more narrowly defined action/powers like many other forms (especially enrage and manipulator). This is an apples to oranges situation. It would be more balanced to use data mining to determine how frequently these actions are taken on average and balance form duration on a case by case basis.

I don't expect to change your mind about this decision but what is being done with form duration is standardization and NOT balance. What you are doing is like treating bear and vodka the same just because they are both alcohol.

guyhumual · May 2016

kaizerin said:

This is intended, not a bug.

Well it looks like I'm not bothering to farm these things. You probably just freed up some time for me to play The Secret World or some Guild Wars 2. Thanks for that.

roughbearmattach · May 2016

I assume that Concentration is going to get a pass/adjustment in the near future, perhaps with the Hexslinger AT. It is currently the easiest form to deal with (though Compassion is pretty easy, too).

Forms are not intended, were never intended, to be "maintain 8 stacks indefinitely". Player knowledge and build skill, as well as changes made since On Alert, have allowed people to game the system, but without balancing by devs for years.

Unknown · May 2016

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themightyzenith · May 2016

All auras should be account bound, not character bound, in my opinion. If we have to put up with this badly conceived idea of an aura system then making them account bound is the least that can be done for the players.

jaazaniah1 · May 2016

The method is bugged and many players are unhappy with the method.

kaizerin said:

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

BUG: Auras bought from Golden Seraph are bind to character, not bind to account, as they should be.

This is intended, not a bug.

superalfgorn · May 2016

Then if Enrage needs to be brought in line with other forms (and I do not think it is a crime), PLEASE make it scale off STR or CON whichever is higher, like all other forms.
CON primary heroes have no form that scales off it and need to choose a second stat to gain full benefits from a form.

Additionally, you could add a second condition that stacks it. I do not know... maybe finishing a combo, or better yet mimick Concentration and make it so a stack is granted upon fully charging or half maintaining an attack.

Finally, to bring all 8-stacks forms in line it would be nice for each of them to have a nifty 3-point advantage:
-boost Endorphin rush and grant it to Enrage, Aspect of the Bestial, Compassion
-give Concentration, Manipulator and Chilled Form their own advantage: maybe an energy over time buff?

P.S.
END as well has no form associated with it. Would it be possible to make Chilled Form scale off EGO or END instead of INT?

roughbearmattach · May 2016

Invalidates them entirely? No.
It means that a form becomes a bonus you can work to build, often at or near a maximum, rather than a automatic guarantee of higher damage/stats.

Making forms last a shorter time, and making them a bit harder to stack means taking R2 or R3 in a form is a viable choice. That would mean taking advantage points from other powers, and perhaps lowering power levels of characters just a bit.

kriss94 · May 2016

kaizerin said:

This is intended, not a bug.

Then that is a very bad intention.

Unknown · May 2016

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Unknown · May 2016

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superalfgorn · May 2016

gradii said:

Making enrage able to scale off CON would overpower the stat even further so I vote NO.

So you would rather have it scale off REC, perhaps? I still think that CON needs a form that scales off it...

Unknown · May 2016

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superalfgorn · May 2016

gradii said:

superalfgorn said:

gradii said:

Making enrage able to scale off CON would overpower the stat even further so I vote NO.
So you would rather have it scale off REC, perhaps? I still think that CON needs a form that scales off it...
I think if a form scales off CON it should be a ranged one. Currently TOO much scales off CON, mainly juggernaut in the STR tree.

I think Juggernaut should scale of STR instead. Give might tanks a reason to pick up some more of their primary stat and not just stack CON through the nose to gain massive offense and defense, let STR do that instead.

it would also make single stat STR builds viable for tanking, but still encourage a balance between STR and CON to achieve an optimal HP/Defense balance.

I agree. I definitely think that Juggernaut is the culprit behind a lot of distortions in the current system.

Unknown · May 2016

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roughbearmattach · May 2016

gradii said:

roughbearmattach said:
Invalidates them entirely? No.
It means that a form becomes a bonus you can work to build, often at or near a maximum, rather than a automatic guarantee of higher damage/stats.

Making forms last a shorter time, and making them a bit harder to stack means taking R2 or R3 in a form is a viable choice. That would mean taking advantage points from other powers, and perhaps lowering power levels of characters just a bit.
That entirely depends on if you can build stacks in the first place.

If your character can't build stacks off of the form, then you change form, or change powers.

ATs do have to have powers that will proc the form. They might not have an optimal power rotation, but if they have powers that do the trick, then no problem. Some players might pick choices on ATs that leave them in a bad place form-wise (such as a Behemoth with Thunderclap), but inexperienced players will make sub-optimal choices (like ranking up energy builders on low level toons before ranking up passives). That's part of learning a game.

As far as Concentration goes, it is simply a great form, possibly too good. My ranged Infernal toons use it instead of the infernal form, since it is easier to proc. Tap-spamming some toxic powers might not net many poison stacks, but if you attack from at least 50' away, you're all set with Concentration.

Unknown · May 2016

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squirrelloid · May 2016

sigmaseven0 said:

Its not unreasonable to interpret this as you suggesting that other forms would be brought in line with enrage, not the other way around.

Forms that are activated by general default combat action like concentration and Form of the Tempest (which can even be proced by your energy builder), cannot be treated the same as forms that proc from more narrowly defined action/powers like many other forms (especially enrage and manipulator). This is an apples to oranges situation. It would be more balanced to use data mining to determine how frequently these actions are taken on average and balance form duration on a case by case basis.

I don't expect to change your mind about this decision but what is being done with form duration is standardization and NOT balance. What you are doing is like treating bear and vodka the same just because they are both alcohol.

I generally agree, but datamining is actually a terrible way to do this, because *players will modify their behavior to jump through the hoops required*. (Especially the case with manipulator, where building more than a couple stacks requires substantial modification of player behavior, and so current skill usage is reflective of the ridiculously short stack duration, not ideal control power usage).

---------------

More generally, i think it's time to accept that they *are* second passives, and that ship has sailed. Nothing the devs do will change that - people will find ways to game the system. The error was giving ranged builds access to toggles (as toggles are what made being in melee worthwhile in the first place), and there's no going back.

At which point, toggle duration should be based on the nature of the requirement to trigger the toggle, with 20s duration as the floor (for things like concentration where its trivial to trigger), with longer durations for more specific toggle triggers. Manipulator should go back to the full minute stack duration, and others should fall somewhere in-between based on trigger specificity.

morigosa · May 2016

Really not a fan of the enrage change. It did need to not scale with explicitly constitution, but 20 seconds is just too short.

Compare to Concentration: I can (cutscenes aside) keep Concentration stacks up indefinitely using any "ranged" PBAoE move. And (unlike Howl), those PBAoE attacks are actually useful for more than just maintaining forms. (Plus Howl has a very thematic animation & sound and no options for alternate animations, making it feel just wrong on any character that's not wolf-like.)

Similarly not a fan of increased internal cooldowns on focus forms; Focus used to feel like the "yeah, it falls off fast, but it also builds up fast" option. Combining the worst features of Focus and Enrage and then applying that to every form (that's not Concentration) is not a good step.

Reverting the duration nerf to Manipulator - or giving it ways to proc that don't require using CC - would be a good change.

* * * * *

Did you fix the bug where Bite's new advantage to grant/refresh Furious wasn't refreshing Furious? Didn't see that in the list.

While you're fixing bugs where things eat debuffs that weren't yours, could you take a look at Absorb Heat? (And there are other powers with this problem, like all the lightning powers that consume negative ions...)

roughbearmattach · May 2016

gradii said:
<

And not all ranged attacks have a longer than 50 foot range, its already difficult to stack concentration with 2 gun mojo.

All my toxic characters use aspect of the infernal for exactly the opposite reason, Aspect is much easier to stack.

You also build enrage stacks when a maintain ranged attack is held for at least halfway. Two-Gun Mojo can build stacks that way.

Heck, I can build 8 stacks of Concentration right now by spamming a PBAoE with a charge up or maintain, such as from Force. I can do this while waiting for a combat to begin, and then enter with 8 stacks.
That is just too easy.

notyuu · May 2016

It's been said before, but I'm going to say it again, reducing the duration of a form is never a good thing.... if it was up to me personally I would have all forms last a flat 20/40/60 seconds depending on the rank....making ranking a form actually worth while.

pantagruel01 · May 2016

superalfgorn said:
So you would rather have it scale off REC, perhaps? I still think that CON needs a form that scales off it...

It does. Defiant is a form-like power.

cyrone · May 2016

I see a lot of dependency on Form duration here. I, for one, welcome the duration changes. Maybe it's my play style, maybe it's the way I build characters, but I've never had to depend on a Form to get the most out of my characters. My Photon Fury character is a good example. Pestilence passive, Concentration, most of the damage is Particle and DoT (clinging flames, poison, Pest, particle burn, Anguish) and the character literally melts foes without being a "I've got to put everything into the best stats possible to get the most out of my super easy to stack form with the best damage passive so that I can be one of the Elites" build.

Edit:

Another example of mine is my character Echo. Unarmed/Might/Unstop/Enrage. Can easily build and maintain Enrage and will be able to do so even after these changes go Live.

I guess I'm not seeing what the big deal is here.

Unknown · May 2016

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chaosdrgnz43 · May 2016

notyuu said:
It's been said before, but I'm going to say it again, reducing the duration of a form is never a good thing.... if it was up to me personally I would have all forms last a flat 20/40/60 seconds depending on the rank....making ranking a form actually worth while.

60 seconds seems a bit much. It could go to probably 20/30/40 seconds.

FC.31.20160512.10 - Bug Fixes

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