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FC.31.20201113.5 - Eidolon Fixes

kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
edited December 2020 in PTS - The Archive
Eidolon
  • Fixed an issue where Enervating orbs did not damage players.
  • Fixed an issue where Eidolon had a super long aggro range.
  • Fixed an issue where Shadow Crystal boosts were being removed when they were defeated. They should be removed when all of them are defeated.
  • Increased the amount of health on Shadow Crystals.
  • Fixed an issue where some attacks could be avoided while flying.
  • Increased the set bonus stats for the new gear.
  • Updated area fx on Shattering Rain.
  • Boss fight area should no longer keep you in combat.
​​
Post edited by kaiserin#0958 on

Comments

  • carrionbaggagecarrionbaggage Posts: 721 Community Moderator
    edited November 2020
    Some notes after tonight's session...

    - The Shadow Claws that aren't near the edge of the whirlpool are difficult to reach with 50-foot attacks, without getting whirled into the pool. If this is a mechanic for ranged dps, can the pool radius be reduced slightly to accommodate 50-foot builds?

    - Eido frequently stumbles over nearby players. When he's doing his cone attack, this can briefly tilt the cone onto players that are close behind him. Can he be set to self-root during that attack?

    - Past Eido often had one disoriented person running forward and starting the timer after portaling into the arena. With the old one-hour timer, a few wasted minutes weren't a huge issue; but I can see this being a problem with the new timer. Can the pack of ambush imps by the ground-level portal be removed, so the ground floor can be used as a safe gathering point?

    Between Shadow Claws, the stumble-tilt cone issue, and the AoE ground circles, melee dps seems undesirable compared to ranged. I understand the ground circles (melee does more dps, but has to move and stop their rotation occasionally); but the stumble issue feels like a bug, and preventing a dps position from engaging in a dps mechanic feels unfortunate.

    *edit* Eido's aggro range still feels a little long. When a tank engages him normally, he can wipe the group with his cone if he uses it before the tank gets close enough to sufficiently rotate him away from the portal wall.
  • - Past Eido often had one disoriented person running forward and starting the timer after portaling into the arena. With the old one-hour timer, a few wasted minutes weren't a huge issue; but I can see this being a problem with the new timer. Can the pack of ambush imps by the ground-level portal be removed, so the ground floor can be used as a safe gathering point?

    Timer doesn't start until Eido falls below a certain HP threshold. Though, I do think this is a good suggestion. To add to it, it would be nice if we could also join TeamUp at this gathering point.
  • carrionbaggagecarrionbaggage Posts: 721 Community Moderator
    Timer doesn't start until Eido falls below a certain HP threshold. Though, I do think this is a good suggestion. To add to it, it would be nice if we could also join TeamUp at this gathering point.

    Thanks for the correction; I didn't realize there was an HP threshold now. And I like the teamup note. It would be neat if you could stay teamed-up when respawning at the HERMES checkpoint too, but that's probably wishful thinking.

    I suppose reducing the aggro range would also help quality of life; just something to prevent tiptoeing a couple steps forward from wiping the assembling group.
  • kaiserin#0958 kaiserin Posts: 3,078 Cryptic Developer
    Unfortunately we cannot do teamup at the respawn point, you need to be within the confines of the open mission area.​​
  • carrionbaggagecarrionbaggage Posts: 721 Community Moderator
    It would be nice to see a stronger visual tell for his room-wide AoE blast. There's the BOOM icon, but that's easily missed by a healer not targeting Eido. I understand why a wireframe was vetoed, but maybe a temporary aura?
    Eido frequently stumbles over nearby players. When he's doing his cone attack, this can briefly tilt the cone onto players that are close behind him. Can he be set to self-root during that attack?

    After thinking about it more, I'm not certain which attack was hitting me when I was close behind him. If hugging his heels put me in AoE range of the blasts on the tank, that could be an unintended side effect of shrinking his size. I'll have to run it again to confirm.
  • behemothking#9246 behemothking Posts: 120 Arc User
    edited November 2020
    I definitely noticed that depending on how close to Eido the MT is standing, Eido's Kaboom! tell attack could hit melee dps at his feet behind him. I think it's a sphere kind of AoE that might be a bit too big.

    I did also notice the cone hitting people. He definitely decides to move somehow under some condition during that cone maintain attack, and I think Eido has always done this. Well, one case that was most obvious was when he would start his maintain on his cone and then, I think, he would jump over or around the MT which angles the cone at every non-tank. Where he would hit dps without jumping over the tank, I think it was because he was only jumping which would angle the cone downwards at the tank and thus that cone shape extends into melee dps behind him? I don't remember exactly if it's a jump or not, but there's certainly movement.

    It's something about as annoying as the old random sliding Teleiosaurus cosmic movement before, but manageable because it could be prevented by the tank standing a bit away from Eido, similar to putting distance from Medusa in TA to give space for melee dps to not be hit by Lance Rain. Still, big QoL change for the fight if movement weirdness and sphere damage range can be fixed.

    Checked the parse and Holly Graham@carrionbaggage, you got hit by Shadow Shred (3 maintain instances), Ebon Ruin (1 time), and Eldritch Blast (1 time), all no blocks so I assume that these were all unexpected. Some other dpses also were hit.

    Edit: About the fight: That Shadow Claw phase is insane atm and I think that it is near impossible to deal with right now unless we really want a lot of ranged DPS to stand near the portal and always stare at the portal for tentacles spawning to get rid of them asap. Doesn't he also open one of those portals near the end of the fight? If so, lol you can forget about ever completing Eido.

    I think it has to do with how they do too much damage no matter what. I was thinking that there could be ways to make it so that it's "bad to ignore" instead of "this is always bad". What if they scaled in damage over time to their current amount so that at least you give players time to react? That could be some kind of damage buff every few seconds or every consecutive hit on someone increases the damage dealt by next attacks. That way a player can tell that they are being targeted and react by blocking, instead of them dying in effectively two hits just because a claw likes them.

    Then again, they do strip buffs, so doesn't that include block? Then, if no block, players have few options other than super aggressive healing AND killing claws immediately which is difficult. Or maybe you want us to use mind control or confuse? Or maybe you want us to use Execution Shot and Dragon's Bite? Nah, that would be so weird.

    Edit 2: Can confirm that he does jump while maintaining if you get too close to him.
    Post edited by behemothking#9246 on
  • lunnylunnylunnylunny Posts: 186 Arc User

    Or maybe you want us to use mind control(...)?

    I tried mind control on the last go during the first new-eido day. Didn't work on them(they're tagged to not be mind controlled like robots, zombies and pets), that was also the time I then held block and proceeded to get hit 5~7 times by the very same claw, but I don't think it was related.

    I dont think it removed my block, cause for the most part I was blocking the hits reasonably well (the block might've just reapplied in time though, but because blocks are buffs yeah they should[as in, programming wise should] also be getting removed, I wasn't paying attention to the block buff icon though, just saw the 'Blocked' damage floaters). I don't think the buff removal lasts long enough for the block-canceling to count on this case, but it definitely would strip away toggle stacks, passives, and such- absolutely deadly on its own. I don't think they need to hit as hard as they're hitting, cause it's close to a oneshot without blocking it- and you're most likely not going to block it cause it targets randomly.
  • thisiscraftaaathisiscraftaaa Posts: 177 Arc User
    edited November 2020
    So, I have a question. Why would I use the Eidolon secondary set instead of a full set of Onslaught gear? To compare the two...

    The Eidolon gear pieces can slot a single offensive core, defensive core and utility core respectively, all the way up to R9. That means, to get the most out of them, I'd need to burn thousands of Gs on R9s, as opposed to Onslaught taking a few weeks to casually grind a full set of, that only needs R5 Enhancement mods to perform at peak efficiency. To think about it like this...



    Eidolon Offensive can give one of these stats, up to X at R9:
    103 Critical Strike
    31% Bonus Healing
    74 Offense
    25 Primary Superstat
    5.1 Critical Severity
    55 Critical Strike and 2.7 Critical Severity
    +207 HP whenever defeating a foe
    +40 energy whenever defeating a foe
    A low chance of +552 Offense for 10 seconds whenever landing an attack
    15% defense penetration (if you were gutsy enough to slot a DUC on one of these)
    35% pre-mitigation damage is added as threat
    42% pre-mitigation damage of one specific type is added as threat
    42% pre-mitigation damage of one specific type reduces threat, +15 PSS for 5S whenever using a certain damage type

    I probably missed a few, but pick any (one) of those, and see how it compares to Onslaught gloves:
    +55 of a stat of your choice, Superstat or otherwise
    +7.1 Defense
    AND one of the following:
    +10% melee damage
    +minor damage boost when over 20ft away from the target
    +Allies within 35' gain 20% of the energy you gain
    +30% pre-mitigation damage is added as threat AND 6% pre-mitigation damage is added to you as a shield

    I just don't really see why I'd pick the Eidolon offensive over the Onslaught offensive, outside of maybe building a tank build and needing the extra 5% to 12% threat (but then, doesn't a full set of Distinguished (or Justice, I forget which is more optimal for tanks but I THINK it's Distinguished) already cover that, slotting threat mods into both offense core slots and just using Gloves of the Defender on top of that for added threat as well as a large stat bonus? And since I'm lazy, I won't read out the defensive or utility core ones for the other two Eidolon gear pieces, but I'll just summarize the better options as far as I can tell.

    For defensive pieces, you could milk an extra 21 Defense from an R9 Impact Prism, or 739 HP from an R9 Growth Amulet. These, I'd wager are very good, if you're looking for raw survivability as a tank, but the Onslaught defensive gives +553 HP and +14 Defense, AND can be slotted with an R5 Enhancement, making it optimal for DPSes, supports and tanks alike for damage or healing output. And if a tank NEEDS extra survivability, they could just slot an R5 Con mod, which would give +55 con. If memory serves, Con gives 11 health per point normally, so that would be +550 health, for a total of 1103 health and 14 Defense. However, ignoring trash like Tireless and all that, you COULD slot something spicy like Brilliance, which would give you a +20% damage resistance. But that raises the question of why you wouldn't slot it in your defensive primary and just take Onslaught defensive secondary for the overall bonuses it provides anyways, since on their own these Eidolon pieces essentially just sacrifice your secondary gear slots for a single core mod slot of each type. Also, I'm not touching on dodge tanks because there's even less redeeming qualities to slotting dodge mods for Eidolon pieces than just taking the Onslaught dodge defensive piece.

    For support pieces, let's be honest. With the odd exception of CC strength, which is vaaaguely covered by Pre, the only things you're going to bother putting here are potentially an R9 damage mod (like Valerian Scarlet's Radiance, Medusa's Presence, Nighthawk's Talons, etcetera,) Swift Wings if you're feeling fancy (but why would you use Swift Wings at all?) Veteran's Core of Might (to be fair, you can slot this in ANY core slot, whether offensive or defensive or support, but why would you need to sacrifice an entire secondary gear slot for it when a slot on your primary piece works just fine and has less drawbacks? Support just happens to be the easiest place to slot this without any noticeable drawbacks in most builds) or just cost reduction, cooldown reduction or max energy. But again, you can only pick one. And whichever one you pick out of the regular support mods, there's an Onslaught secondary that gives anywhere between the same amount (+15 energy for Mask of Energy vs +15 for R9 Growth Amulet) up to around double the same amount (202 Cost Discount for Mask of Efficiency, vs 102 for Gambler's Lucky Gem 9.) And the Onslaught pieces will always give some Cost Discount and some Cooldown Reduction as well.

    And finally, there's the set bonus, the only remotely redeeming thing about this. +1000 health, +50 to all superstats, and -2s to your ult's cooldown every time you charge a power fully, or maintain a power fully, or complete a combo, with a 6 second cooldown, essentially translating to your ult's cooldown ticking down 1 and 1/3s every second instead of 1 every second. While a pleasant utility, ults usually aren't that much of an increase beyond the norm in terms of damage output, so it's still JUST a pleasant utility.



    Now, I want you to think about the differences between the two sets, and put them together in your head.

    A full Onslaught set will provide a BARE MINIMUM of:
    21.3 Defense
    51 Cost Discount
    51 Cooldown Reduction
    +55 to any stat
    +55 to any stat
    +55 to any stat

    with your choice of extras:
    OFFENSE: +10% melee damage
    OFFENSE: +small ranged damage boost beyond 20' away (arguably the weakest of these by far)
    OFFENSE: +allies gain 20% of the energy you gain
    OFFENSE: +30% pre-mit damage into threat, +6% pre-mit damage into a shield
    DEFENSE: 6.9 Defense and 553 health
    DEFENSE: 76 Dodge Chance and 76 Avoidance (why would you take this unless you're a dodge build?)
    DEFENSE: 51 CC resist (WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THIS AT ALL?)
    SUPPORT: 15 energy
    SUPPORT: 151 Cost Discount
    SUPPORT: 101 Cooldown Reduction and 50 Cost Discount

    While a full Eidolon set will provide a BARE MINIMUM of:
    +50 to all superstats (a total of 150 spread evenly across all three, as opposed to 165 to allocate in thirds anywhere you want, whether spread evenly or stacked 2-to-1 on two superstats, or all on one.)
    +1000 health
    33.333(etc.)% faster ult cooldown (likely anywhere from 25% to 30% since perfect activation would be impossible, and that 25%-30% is assuming you're intentionally proccing it as much as possible even if your powers might perform optimally if you do so.)
    *ALL OF THESE REQUIRE A FULL THREE PIECES SLOTTED, AND SPECIFICALLY OF THE SAME SUBTYPE TOO!

    with your choice of extras:
    One of anything that fits in a offensive core slot
    One of anything that fits in a defensive core slot
    One of anything that fits in a utility core slot



    Now, while that is a (lovely) 3-piece set bonus, there's still the issue of: it's a 3-piece bonus, meaning there's no reason to ever mix and match whatsoever, and otherwise they're effectively just an extra core slot on each of your primary gear pieces, and you're running around with no secondaries. I'd say these are slightly worse than the Cosmic secondaries, which themselves are good but still pale in comparison to the Onslaught secondaries. The Cosmic secondaries can slot core mods as well, but only up to R5. I'm... not sure if they can slot special core mods like DUCs, Brilliance, Veteran's Core and the likes or not. In exchange, they give offense (which is something the Onslaught pieces do not,) slightly more-or-less defense than the Onslaught pieces (22.7 as opposed to 21.3, but without the option of extra defense plus health that lets Onslaught take the edge here) and slightly less Cost Discount and Cooldown Reduction than the bare minimum that Onslaught can yield. (+46 to both, as opposed to +51 to both and +15 max energy as well.) They also give either +46 to PSS on each piece, for a total of 138, or +24 to each SSS on each piece, for a total of 144 split evenly between the two, slightly lower in overall gains than the Eidolon pieces but able to be a little bit more selective in where they're applied. Since there's no reason not to slot special mods like, say, Brilliance on your primary pieces, in all but a few tiny hypothetical situations even Cosmic is just objectively better than Eidolon, which begs the question: "unless I'm building for a very niche situation that's one in a thousand where it'd actually be better, why would I use Eidolon over Cosmic, or especially Onslaught?"



    And with that, I raise three simple suggestions to make Eidolon a viable competitor to Onslaught, and arguably better than Cosmic (since Eidolon pieces drop from, well, Eidolon, I'm assuming, much like Cosmic pieces drop from the main three Cosmics.)
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Suggestion one: make the +1000 health and +50 to all superstats a 2-piece bonus instead of a three-piece! This would allow for some mixing and matching, especially in the case of melee DPSes and tanks where there's essentially no reason not to take Gloves of the Slicer and Gloves of the Defender respectively, every time, and would make it match other gearsets better, since very few gearsets have a 3-piece bonus but no 2-piece (the only one I can think of off the top of my head would be Catalyst's Heirloom, which is the cheap and flimsy Nem heirloom secondary set that gives a chance to find extra catalysts when interacting with crafting nodes, which basically nobody does outside of grinding their crafting to 400 without spending on crafting skill-ups, so it's essentially worthless and not worth mentioning.)
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Suggestion two: add a R1 Enhancement slot (or perhaps an R1 omni slot, if that's possible?) to each of the Eidolon pieces, and in return, reduce the 3-piece (hopefully changed to 2-piece) +50 superstat bonus to 25! The entire worth of these gear pieces lies with their set bonus, and they're still not good enough even with that set bonus. The health is fine as it is, but why not put a little more value into each individual piece by letting it slot a R1 Enhancement or Armoring mod, and then making the set piece stat bonus a little more moderate?

    Thinking about it, a R1 Enhancement or Armoring mod gives +39 to one superstat, which is much smaller than the +55 of Onslaught, and still smaller than the +46 PSS or +24 SSS (+48 total) of Cosmics. But then it gets pulled over the hump by a 25 bonus to all superstats, which is 75 total. If you slotted two Eidolon pieces, then each would give 37.5 spread evenly across all superstats as well as 39 to a stat of your choice, for a total bonus of 76.5 collectively, or 12.5 to all three and then 39 to one of your choice, for a total of 51.5, 12.5 and 12.5, almost as good as Onslaught for stacking up your toggle-form or your Con if you're a tank or whatever else you're aiming for but with a bit of extra fluff and wiggle-room on the side.

    If you slotted all three Eidolon pieces, then it'd be +25 spread across all three superstats for each piece, divided by three would be 8.333(etc.) for each superstat plus 39 for the R1 Enhancement/Armoring. This would be 47.333(etc.) for the superstat of your choice, and 8.333(etc.) for each of the other two. A little less efficient stat-wise than just going two Eidolon and one Onslaught or one Cosmic, but I'll get to addressing that in a bit.

    Firstly, this use for R1 mods would give people a reason to bother with crafting nodes again! It might be a bit annoying, but there'd be a reason to do so! Alternatively, perhaps Max Plank (the fusion tutorial and fusion trainer NPC) could be given a vendor menu where he'd sell R1 mods for 1G a piece? Expensive enough that it couldn't be exploited to easily farm crafting levels, but at the same time cheap enough that just one Smash alert at level 40 would be enough to get Enhancements/Armorings for a whole set of Eidolon gear. This would be a viable alternative if players getting upset about having to bother with a boring, dumb system like the crafting nodes is an issue, I think! And if it isn't... hey, guess people will be bothering with nodes and have a little more use for Catalyst's Heirloom's 3-piece bonus? A tiny up-side, I'd prefer the Max Plank alternative myself, but whatever.

    Secondly, to loop back around... surely you're noticing that this essentially puts Eidolon pieces in the same role as Cosmic pieces, right? Essentially just "for when you don't feel like grinding a full Onslaught set but want something usable?" Well, I have a solution for that, which is suggestion number three!
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Suggestion three: rework and add to the three-piece bonus! A hypothetical 33.333(etc.)% increase in how fast ults recharge is iffy at best. You'd have to go out of your way to get around 25-30%, sacrificing overall performance otherwise for most builds save a few, and the technically optimal 33.333(etc.)% is impossible to achieve. So instead, how about this? The three-piece bonus could come in two parts: a 25% flat cooldown reduction to all powers. Your ult takes 90 seconds to cool down? Now it takes 67.5 seconds. Your self-rez takes 4m 30s (270s) to cool down? Now it takes 202.5 seconds. This is much more beneficial, since some FF builds (and if memory serves, EVERY SINGLE AT) don't even have ults. But that alone isn't enough to give most players a good reason to consider a full Eidolon set. So the second part of the three-piece bonus would be this! -5% damage resistance to hostile targets, in the same layer as Dexterity Spec Tree's Expose Weakness, which means it'd be a flat 5% damage buff when hitting a target whose defenses are reduced to zero by other effects, like Int-primary, Night Warrior, resist debuffs from powers, etcetera. While not as strong as the 10% overall buff of Slicer gloves, it'd be usable regardless of whether you were using a melee or ranged attack, and even tanks and supports with damage-dealing powers could benefit slightly from it.

    In short: 25% flat cooldown reduction to all powers rather than up to a hypothetical 33.333(etc.)% for ult only, and a 5% resist debuff to enemies on the same layer as Dexterity Spec Tree's Expose Weakness, making it a potential 5% damage multiplier. Not as raw a damage boost as Slicer (though potentially better than the embarrassment of Sniper,) not as strong a potential defensive boost as Defender (outside of specific situations where rapid and repeated use of Active Defenses is a necessity,) and not as strong a supportive boost as providing nearly infinite energy to nearby allies, but an even spread increase to all three.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    With all that said, this is just one potential way of making Eidolon's Eternal, Endless and Nightmare sets more worthwhile. Though, given that the set bonuses for all three would be identical, it'd make having three different sets of the same gear pointless. A good excuse to cut down on extra programming, or perhaps to provide a new unique buff to each of the three sets? You be the judge of that.

    Oh, and can anyone else wing their own suggestions for making Eidolon's gear not worthless too?
    Defender save my soul, for I have sinned...
This discussion has been closed.