PTS update FC.28.20120515.0
This build is scheduled to hit PTS by 7:00pm PST
Greetings!
G-Crush has been busy reviewing forum feedback, and making adjustments to player powers accordingly.
This build contains the latest round of updates - keep the feedback coming!
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:Bug
Where it happens
What happens
Player Powers: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.
- Enrage now grants a stack when you attempt to knock a foe.
- You now gain 1.25% of your max health back when you gain a stack of Enraged!
- 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 returned, and now triggers whenever you gain a stack of Enraged!.
*REWORK* Aggressor:
- This power now grants all damage strength, as well as increasing your Strength and Constitution for a short time. This power also grants stacks of Enraged! based on its rank (this can trigger Endorphin Rush).
- This power now counts as an active offense.
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%
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 half charge or maintain a power for at least 4 ticks. Additionally, you gain stacks whenever you strike a foe from more than 25 feet away.
- This buff lasts 20 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Technology" Tree (along with Power Armor, Gadgeteering, Archery, and Munitions).
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.
- *UPDATED* You gain a stack of Compassion whenever you heal an ally, heal yourself, or get healed.
- This buff lasts 20 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Mystic" Tree (with Sorcery and Supernatural).
Manipulator: Toggle - Form
- Manipulator grants you bonus Hold Magnitude and a lesser amount of bonus damage. This bonus scales with your Presence or Intelligence, whichever is higher.
- 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, regardless of whether the hold succeeds.
- This buff lasts 60 seconds.
- This power can be found in the "Mind" Tree (with Telepathy and Telekinetics).
Auras *General*:
- If multiple Auras of the same type are in use in the party, only the best version will be applied.
Aura of Primal Majesty:
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced by 20% while in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this passive has been reduced by 40% while in Hybrid.
- The self portion of this passive has been reduced by 25% 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.
- This power now grants Charge Speed while used in Hybrid.
- This power no longer increases the healing done by allies while used 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 power now grants Charge Speed while used in Support.
- This power no longer increases your healing while used 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).
Medical Nanites:
- This power now functions differently depending on your selected role (Hybrid or Support).
- The self portion of this power has been increased by 30% in Hybrid.
- The ally portion of this power has been increased by 150% in Support.
Regeneration:
- This power has been buffed by roughly 30%.
Specializations: Sentinel Aura:
- This specialization has had its healing reduced by 70%.
Art:
- Updates for Power Armor power effects
Comments
Soldier + concentration =
As for sent aura's 70% nerf, Is that REALLY Called for? 70%?! HONESTLY?!
Though looking at Sent... 70%... ouch the gutting.
70% Sentinel Aura nerf Seriously? It might have seem to undermine Medical Nanites (because Nanites are seriously underpowered), but ts not really THAT good.
With a dedicated healer getting upwards of 1200 HP/3 seconds? I'm not surprised it got nerfbatted that hard.
Maybe they should've changed the scaling, so it took far more Pre or whatever to scale it upwards to avoid it getting to insane levels.
Agreed .
That reminds me, When we have 8 stacks and we refreshing them, Will we keep getting the heal from stacking enrage as well as endorphin rush when we refresh?
Yes, you will.
I think I love you!
Nisdimus - Hold Magnitude.. is there a chance the rest of your hold buffs will respect "Hold Magnitude" instead of Hold Time?
I can completely understand if this comes with a general "nerf" of the base numbers of holds before buffs are added. But Investing in Holds should make up for this offset.
- -
I want to be able to really test the numbers of +Hold and +HoldResistence but so far the entire mechanic is still very disjointed bbecause they are not all buffing/debuffing the same system. Also the "power deactivation" of Incapacitates is for the most part seen as a bug by the "noob" community and generally not a good solution. An alternative is to remove incapacitates as a hold type and keep the hold immunity when you've broken free of a hold. You may also want to raise the base hold-per-tick amount on incapacitates as you did with paralyzes and sleeps.
Also melee stuns should be a static hold amount again. 8 second stuns surely weren't intended.. particularly when incapacitates break in 1 second. If you have a hold mechanic that isn't broken by damage, keep them short.
Finally, the hold resistance mechanic as a whole.. I have to go back to @WickedWillow's model of holding in general. Allow for one (1) chain hold.. give the held player stacks hold resistance as they are continually chained to help break them free (increase their breakfree-per-tick like +HoldResistance gear does).. Once free give them hold immunity from holds that lasts a semi-substantial amount of time (8-10 seconds or so). This way players who both use a hold on the same target are not penalized just for using the same power type and the held player is still not "held forever".
In Summary:
Holds are necessary in PvP but that doesn't mean they should come without sacrifice. They SHOULD be weak at base value (still enough to work on a non-resistant player). Those who invest in holds should be rewarded (with "Hold Magnitude"). Those who invest in +HoldResistance should be rewarded (with +Breakfree-per-tick). Hold users should not be penalized just because someone else used a hold first (name any other system where compounding powers comes at a penalty to the caster's ability to function?).
Do this (i know it's all the NPCs and a short list of buffs to change functionality) and you will have done enough to convince me you really do mean to balance your systems. You will have won me as a paying customer, too.
If you go the extra step and make "Manipulation" bring back PvP Confuse (many griefers of the power have left anyhow) and I can promise you a new lifetime sub.. actually I'll do you one better.. I'll but a lifetime sub for myself and 2 of my SG mates.
And while we are at it, can we see about making frenzy a 3 second maintain with it granting enrage after 1.5 seconds? Just dump the third animation and speed up the normal animation leaving the 0.5 second ticks and maybe making the slashes look more varied while animating?
I completely agree on both counts. Regen resist heal reduction is rather self explanatory. Frenzy as a maintain makes sense. When I picture something going into a frenzy, I see claws and gore flying everywhere.
Scarlyng approves of this suggestion.
I also agree on both. What other passive (short of PFF) can be outright shut down with a character's power pick? Of course, now that I ask, someone will say that Skarn's Bane can shut off Defiance/Invul.
And Bestial needs a way to stack Enrage short of spamming Massacre (as it's a knock and works with New Enrage) over and over again.
And yeah. Honestly, if it weren't for the advantages on the Enrage power then I would say just give every Enrage set a way to stack Enrage that's as easy to use as Cleave.
Beastial definitely needs some way of stacking it quickly.
Can I have a sub too?
Also, given the functionality of On Alert -- namely, random teaming -- please give Auras some kind of overlap/stacking benefit, even if it's relatively small. At the very least, letting a player be affected by their own Aura and the same Aura as cast by one teammate helps with the whole "Save Our Supports" campaign.
I don't really like the sound of that.
That'd make it damn-near useless for bubble builds, not "make their lives easier". Leave it as a heal over time, please.
Marvels.
And I'm deadly serious.. that's like 900 bucks in subs I'll buy if you just fix the hold system.
Both true, but i have a strong premonition that the next big revamp will be the defensive passive pass that Ame has been hinting as for ages.
Bestial does. Howl, Bite and Frenzy.
There are a couple of good healing specialties for damage dealers, a health on kill and a health on crit. While they are not as good as SA currently is, that in and of itself points to a substantial problem.
So yeah, the nerf was needed. It's a heavy nerf, and that sucks, it's a wicked tease for anyone who used and fell in love with the power in the past few weeks, but better to deal with it now, quickly, and not let it linger on unbalancing things and rendering a plethora of other abilities pointless by its mere existence.
.. powers that only refresh the buff don't seem to make as much sense as they used to.
Uh, after this update they are suppose to stack enrage, not just refresh it if you have the enrage toggle.
Also, does anyone know what's going to happen with Aspect of the Beastial? Because as of the Enrage Toggle change we can't use it with Enrage either.
I like the idea of Enrage as a toggle, but it really does look like it'll need a global rebalance pass to get it to work right.
EDIT: I'm sorry, I didn't see the stacking changes in the patch notes, could you link me to that announcement? Because that sounds awesome.
Also using only the strongest buff on Aura's is great.. but not great. Two AoPMs team up and now there's no synergy? Who's buff gets top billing if one has a heavy self buff and the other has a heavy team buff but no self buff?
I think they should stack. I think the nerf was necessary and around the right amount... however, I DO support turning the aura into "Beacon of Hope Aura"
I can live with the no stacking but I don't "like it".
- -
I do want to throw this out there since we're all talking balance and how stacking influences it.. I really think bubbles should follow the same rule as bionic shielding.. give it an internal per user countdown. Can't perma-recast it on any one target (including self).
Now see I can kinda live with that. At least some percentage of somebody with the same aura would be taken into account.
Edit : Also Cryptic small note: 70% reduction on sentinel aura? That's pretty extreme. Like alot of other peeps have voiced a reduction between 30-50% would be far more fair.
I do love the fact that you guys finally gave Medical Nanites some love. Now Aura of Ebon Destruction needs an extra oomph as well to make it more seductive of a selection. Might I suggest it also debuffs enemy resistance be a percentage depending on if you're running hybrid or support roles?
While I agree with them nerfing it now (as opposed to six months from now), 70% is rather...harsh.
Will it be able to be buffed by Compassion? If so, that makes a bit more sense. That's the thing that's going to decide me between Compassion or Concentration (unless there's a stealth buff to IDF to make it actually worth taking in the new environment).
Especially since bubbles aren't being buffed by Compassion, at least as of the previous patch.
It's rather odd that a character that's running in support role, with a support passive, with Pre as the highest stat, won't have any use for the healing toggle. But that's my own fault, for hating green-number-spam.
No and no. Not everyone wants to support by spamming Iniquity or making their opponents into test dummies (which you've been making a concerted effort to push for the past month or so). It disgusts me that your temper tantrums and campaign of misinformation actually bore fruit, but hey, at least the game isn't losing a sub.
They need more varied, valuable buffs/debuffs besides "spend your time spamming green numbers" and "make the enemy unable to fight back". Once those are in, then you can start nerfing bubbles.
GMC discussed it in the last patch notes thread.
As far as enrage, nothing really changed. It and focus have always had the same potential output but if you used strength and dex you could reach higher potential a tad easier while enrage hit it faster.
As far as frenzy, maintain would be better.
Considering it gets buffed by every other thing that buffs healing, I think that's a foregone conclusion.
I didn't read it to mean that attacks that already give an Enraged! stack would give more than one stack when the toggle is on.
Can someone at Cryptic clarify this?
1k over what? The only way for that to work would be if endorphin stacks and just doesn't refresh. Though I don't recall endorphin stacking when Id id use it.
Enrage could possibly heal you for 1k rather quickly
As listed, without an internal cooldown, it'd be 1.25% of your max HP as fast as you can spam an attempted knock.
So something like 0.5 or 0.67 seconds. And since it's possible to get like 14,000 HP now...it leaves pre-nerf Sentinel Aura in the dust.
It'll have the same internal cooldown that Focus currently does. It just has to. Otherwise it can be stacked up way too quickly and heal for just insane amounts.
Also would like to see Fire's Fire Strike become a Maintain and all the skills that lower Charge time on Blasts to also Quicken the Tick rate of Maintains and for all the 'basic' Ranged Maintains to be Blast powers so that would mean the total list of Blasts would be:
Lightning Arc, Fire Strike, Force Blast, Ice Blast, Gust (think that's the wind one), Straight Shot, Pulse Beam Rifle and Experimental Blaster, Two Gun Mojo and Assault Rifle, Eye Beams and Tactical Missiles, Telekinetic Assault and Ego Blast, Eldritch Blast, Shadow Blast, Rebuke, Infernal Blast and Lash, Hurl and Iron Chain, and finally pebble toss (definitely no idea on the name for Earths)
Even if I was wrong, it should.