Champions! We have some big changes coming with some powers you know and love, as well as some new powers to round out some builds and add missing elements that players have been asking for!
If we go through with these changes all affected players will receive a Retcon.
Since On Alert! went live we have been looking at the state of powers and want to offer a sneak peak at some of the changes that will be making their way to the PTS soon!
First up, we are making some adjustments to Forms, as well as adding 3 brand new forms to choose from!
Below are the patch notes relating to Forms.
Enrage:
- Enrage is now a toggled form. Toggling on Enrage allows you to build more than 1 stack of Enraged! at a time. This power counts as a Form.
- This power now affects Melee damage for its full amount, and ranged damage for half that amount.
- Effectiveness reduced by 30%
- Advantage: Endorphin Rush: This advantage has been removed because it no longer fits the intended function of the power.
Focus:
- Now scales only on Dexterity, instead of Half of Strength and Dexterity
- This power now affects Melee damage for its full amount, and ranged damage for half that amount.
- Effectiveness reduced by 30%
*New Power* Concentration: Toggle - Form
- Concentration grants you bonus ranged damage and a lesser amount of bonus melee damage. This bonus scales with your Ego or Intelligence, whichever is higher.
- Concentration grants you bonus energy when you gain a stack of it. This bonus energy scales with your Ego or Intelligence, whichever is higher.
- You gain a stack of Concentration whenever you fully charge or maintain a power.
- This buff lasts 20 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Technology" Tree (along with Power Armor, Gadgeteering, Archery, and Munitions).
*New Power* Compassion: Toggle - Form
- Compassion grants you bonus healing and a lesser amount of bonus damage. This bonus scales with your Presence or Recovery, whichever is higher.
- Compassion grants you bonus energy when you gain a stack of it. This bonus energy scales with your Presence or Recovery, whichever is higher.
- You gain a stack of Compassion whenever you heal an ally.
- This buff lasts 20 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Mystic" Tree (with Sorcery and Supernatural).
*New Power* Manipulator: Toggle - Form
- Manipulator grants you bonus Hold Magnitude and a lesser amount of bonus damage. This bonus scales with your Presence or Recovery, whichever is higher.
- *NOTE* This will allow you to hold Super Villains and Legendaries (for very short amounts of time).
- Manipulator grants you bonus energy when you gain a stack of it. This bonus energy scales with your Presence or Recovery, whichever is higher.
- You gain a stack of Manipulator whenever you fully charge or maintain a Control power.
- This buff lasts 60 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Mind" Tree (with Telepathy and Telekinetics).
These are some huge changes, and we would like to give more players more options for toggleable stacking buffs.
In relation to this, we have taken a look at the Aura passives in the Mystic Tree and a few changes will be made to these powers.
We would like Auras to better fill their role as support powers which greatly strengthen the team of the player who is using them. Below are the notes relating to Auras.
Aura of Primal Majesty:
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced by 30% while in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this passive has been reduced by 30% while in Hybrid.
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced by 40% while in Support.
- The ally portion of this passive has been increased by 60% while in Support.
- This passive is now functions differently depending on your selected role (either Hybrid or Support).
Aura of Arcane Clarity:
- The self portion of this passive has been increased by 30% while in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this passive has been increased by 15% while in Hybrid.
- The self portion of this passive has been increased by 10% while in Support.
- The ally portion of this passive has been increased by 200% while in Support.
- This passive is now functions differently depending on your selected role (either Hybrid or Support).
Aura of Radiant Protection:
- The self portion of this passive has been increased by 25% while in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this passive has been reduced by 15% while in Hybrid.
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced by 20% while in Support.
- The ally portion of this passive has been increased by 50% while in Support.
- This passive is now functions differently depending on your selected role (either Hybrid or Support).
Aura of Ebon Destruction:
- The self portion of this passive has been increased by 15% when in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this passive has been reduced 20% when in Hybrid.
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced 5% when in Support.
- The ally portion of this passive has been increased by 200% when in Support.
- This passive is now functions differently depending on your selected role (either Hybrid or Support).
These are some really big changes, and player feedback is important at the different stages of adjusting and balancing these powers, and your feedback is greatly appreciated! Keep your eyes on the PTS for your chance to test these new changes in the next few days!
Comments
Now that might can no longer have Enrage and Aggressor both at once active, are you going to reverse the net-nerf of all of might's powers that occured in melee pass years ago, necessitating the purchase of aggressor to "buy back" the damage of those powers?
Would I be correct in assuming that the 'compassion' form won't build stacks for healing yourself? Would pets be counted as allies? Would you build stacks if you heal an ally, even if they're at full health?
I'm really surprised you guys haven't learned how undesirable form powers are that require a full maintain. Drop them to only require like a 33% or 50% maintain instead.
I know now might not be the right time to ask, but I seriously hope you plan of offering a new round of free retcons, cause holy cow, the number of builds you just put in the ground...
::EDIT::
And now that I have time to think of it, it's not going to affect PvP the way we'd like it to. Ranged will still dominate because the tools melee relies on to close in (CC and so forth) are STILL useless because of gear/spec trees. Any chance those will be looked at as well (Protector's snare invulnerability, for example).
They said they would in the initial post...
^ That would be awesome. Hulk out!
I second this - make it function like intensity, but w/ STR + CON instead, and have the endorphin rush as an advantage, (perhaps upping the heal a bit as it'd now have a 90 sec cooldown).
100% Agree with this. Turn Aggressor into the active offense.
Sowwy.
Hands. Off.
Does anyone use AoAC? Is anyone going to take it now? Doubtful.
wow just wow.
Um...why are you blaming PvP? Maybe they don't want you to be able to solo everything so easily? Maybe THEY WANT SOME GAME BALANCE?
Yes, yes yes yes! Since Enrage being a toggle will pretty much make aggressor useless, it neeeeeds to be changed into an active offense so it doesn't get fully shafted by this patch.
You must be able to do some crazy party tricks with that gaping hole in your head.
Also, what happened to my forum avatar?
This! Not only for might, but just remove all toggles\aspects now please, and buff base damages of melle powers
Also enrage... don't you think it's kinda underpowered now, since it doesn't give energy when you stack it AND is huch harder to stack, making it useless compared to focus\concentration damage-wise?
And why we even NEED that concentration buff? Ranged was overpowered before, and now you make it even better by giving them it's own toggle that scales with stats that don't punish rangeds for overstacking them, unlike STR did for enrage... And it also gives energy on stack now... /faceclaw
Everyone asks to nerfs rangeds, cryptic buffs them instead lol.
Oh, and i see you've done nothing to fix horrible melle role, that makes catching someone virtually impossible with that horrible -20% cc debuff,
Suggestion: Lower the base benefit the aura gives to yourself, but have it apply stacks of the same buff to yourself for each teammate or ally in range that it affects.
why charges? archery, guns, PA, most magic, are either clicks or maintains, right? any way to have it on, either half charge and half maintain or.....something
Game balance whut u kidding right if everyone is in the same sodding side whut does it matter >_> Whut should I be on a level playing field as say a behemoth or an Unleashed.
No my toon should be far more powerfull...fairs fair you pay a little extra you get a slightly better service...
Then again, it effects PvP to a degree, its a step in the right direction, AoPM enrage got a bigtime hammer.
Tho what im waiting to test is Old enraged vs new ranged forms . If new ranged form is ~30% less, then i gues its kinds balanced.
Trolling/insulting feedback will be ignored entirely.
Your toon is far more powerful? Then you don't need AoPM to do that. -cough cough- Offensive Passive -cough cough-
So much for a viable support class. Suffer the damage reduction for being in support. Or live without a passive. Yea!
The nerfing to Aura of arcane clarity and Aura of Ebon Destruction's self-buff; These powers were never really worthwile passives to begin with, as they offer little in the ways of defense overall. Especially Aura of Ebon Destruction will become lackluster, since it will now be limited to a supportive passive with a very meager self-buff to damage. If you look at viable options, such as Seraphim, Medical nanites and Aura of Radiant Protection, these offer either a high buff to damage, a self-heal or extra defense to simply survive fighting off enemies. While this might not be a problem while teaming, bear in mind that most people do missions on their own (Freeforms more so than others and as of yet, Ebon aura is a freeform only passive).
Most of this applies to Aura of Arcane Clarity as well.
Another thing is about Aggressor. With enrage always having been the primary source of damage buffing for Might and Heavy weapons, what'll you do with this form to make it just as viable a choice for these powersets as enrage? Also, how will this affect AT's such as The Behemoth and The Devastator?
Martial arts forms stacks to 8, other forms to 5. Will there be some sort of balancing here, or will different forms simply yield a different amount of stacks?
As mentioned before, charging or maintaing powers completely isn't always the best course of action, especially when teaming. Could Concentration and similar powers have their requirement reduced to 50% like Form of the Tiger?
And that was all for this time. I will return with more.
See you after this mess sorts itself out, hopefully it's measured in months and not "never".
Does this mean these powers can no longer be used in hybrid? I only play in hybrid role, I don't use the other roles for various reasons and it's been that way since the game launched. I'd like to know if I'm effectively locked out of 4 powers now, despite paying for full freefrom, unless I lock myself to one role the way free silver players are locked into.
Like I said, the big bonus to teammates should come from CHOOSING the support role. We should not have to be forced into a role to use the power.
Nerfing AoPM by 40% and the 40% buff on the team members would make a lot more sense.
Good thinking I think ill do that
The combination of these two changes is more then a little bit crazy, IMO. I suppose I can see why AoPM got a bit of a hit (though I think the net overall hit is a bit too much), but exactly what part of AoAC and AoED were overperforming at the values they were capable of putting out? And why was the self-defense portion of AoRP (which was already somewhat low to begin with) hit as hard as it was?
I suppose I can guess that some of this had to do with Mastery auras, but unless stacking of those is being looked at as well, I don't think it's necessarily including a fair amount of actual, real choice if just to get the same personal-defensive bonus on myself I'm forced to pick up an Aura from masteries as well. Especially since now, I'm already putting out a larger defensive bonus to my team (compounding the problem there).
It's a hit to solo-play with a buff to team-play. Were any of them doing all that bad in a team situation to necessitate this?
Not sure how I feel about the Enrage change, though I echo Brou's statement: What about Might and Aggressor?
EDIT:
That, I could deal with, if they want to go that route. Just don't kneecap my ability to solo with characters where I make the decision to pick up these auras. It's already somewhat of a chore for me to work with them as it is, and this would most certainly not help that situation any at all.
As the dev said...
"If we go through with these changes all affected players will receive a Retcon."
I don't know about you guys, but I kind of like the way this all looks.
My munitions toon cannot fully maintain two gun mojo on a henchman without it dying, and it's only at rank 1 (with crippling challenge). That's to say nothing of much higher damage maintains.
Speaking of Two Gun Mojo. What about it granting a stack of Enrage, and the advantage on Bullet Beatdown and Lead Tempest which synergize with that single stack of Enraged.
Are you guys looking at these things and making adjustments? Keep in mind that currently you can have one stack of Enraged without it conflicting with other forms (my munitions character, for example, uses Form of the Tempest and is essentially a Bullet Beatdown centric build, I rely on FotT for damage, but the stack of Enraged for defense and aoe with its synergies with Bullet Beatdown and Lead Tempest).
I'd like to know this too.
Auras:
I'm in full agreement with this statement. AoRP is just usable enough without breaking things too hard (in my opinion). Get the rest to that level (push AoPM down, and AoED/AoAC up) and then see what else needs to be done once we get there.
AoAC could probably use a full, complete review and re-design, but that's an entirely different conversation I assume.
That is kind of a good question. This change definitely looks to be kicking the other forms in the nads.
Do your plans include amending the archetypes to add these new forms in?
If not, it seems like it would make the already massive gap between most of the ATs and proper builds even larger.