Vanden

So with build 5, both Synaptic Overload and Jolting Chain have faster chaining: But as you can see, there's barely any "chain" to them. They pretty much feel like targeted AoEs now; both powers can apparently hit up to 9 targets with their first jump, and in the clip here Synaptic Overload hits its 10 target cap with only one jump. They just don't feel as fun and unique any more with these huge target caps on their jumps. Compare it to live: Jolting Chain actually feels like a chain as it works its way through the mob, knocking them down one after the other instead of just hitting them all at once. And while Synaptic Overload takes much longer to hit the whole mob on Live than on Beta, that delay meant it never felt overpowered like Seeds of Confusion does. In addition, with the changes on beta, both powers have lost the visual effect of the arcs of electricity that jump between the targets as they chain. There's only the on-hit FX now.

The displayed character seems to be periodically restarting the loyalty emote animation, instead of just looping it endlessly.

So am I missing something here? What does this test prove? No one is trying to solo a boss at level 40 with only their t1 attack. If it's not possible any more, that doesn't mean anything, because it wasn't a thing that happened to begin with.

Now we see the true face of Arachnos, and it is a dedication to oppression! Of course the government of the Etoile Islands wastes no time in putting in a new headquarters for their corrupt institution of "law," while the land tunnel between Port Oakes and Cap Au Diable remains closed after 20 years!

A bug with Spirit Tree: It's visibly summoning two trees, one for the taunting and one for the regen buff, which means it's doubling up on particle FX.

No, I took it out specifically so there’d be some misses in order to demonstrate what it looks like when there’s a miss. Yup, even with the thrice-damned hit cap that does happen from time to time.

All sleep powers are autohit; the tohit rolls they have to do for anything that isn't regular sleep don't show up in the combat log.

I'd like to echo what others are saying here that's it's very easy for the Spirit Tree to lose aggro. I assume its Taunt power has a very low target cap.

Incorrect. Misses do not count against the target cap. This is easy to test, if you don’t believe me.

That doesn't contradict what I said? I said that when AoE controls roll their tohit checks, anything that's already mezzed would be skipped until it runs out of non-mezzed targets to check against.

It would be pretty convenient if AoE controls could be forced to do their ToHit checks against already-mezzed targets last, so if it hits the target cap before it can affect everything in the AoE you don't get redundant controlling.

Homecoming did publish a statement with their long-term balance goals, over four years ago.

The Gremlins' new melee attack hits much too soon in its animation, and they don't seem to be using Jolting Chain at all on my Dominator. The fixed Jolting Chain (player version) hits like 8 targets on the first and second jump, at that point it's barely even a chain, might as well just make it a ranged AoE. Fewer targets hit per jump just makes more thematic sense.

So I saw in the patch notes that PEACE Vanguards use the advanced shotgun model now, but I ran into one on the street doing an ambient animation where she was holding the regular shotgun. When I aggroed her, she then replaced her standard shotgun with the advanced one to attack me, looked fairly odd.

You guys realize that all this hullabaloo is about Seeds of Confusion, right? Just Seeds. That's the only true nerf in the patch on Open Beta. One power in one power set used by two archetypes, that nearly everybody acknowledges is too powerful. My God, I remember the apocalyptic shitstorm that ED and issue 5 caused, and yet the game continued on, it was still CoH and still fun. I thought people could have matured in the 20 years since, maybe gained some perspective, but if anything they've gotten worse. Virtually everyone who doesn't just want to preserve the game in amber will express the sentiment that the under-performers should be brought up and the over-performers should be brought down a little, yet every single time Homecoming tries to do the latter it causes an enormous uproar.

I can confirm that Jolting Chain is taking longer to work its way through a spawn on Beta. I think I prefer the faster chains, it just feels better. Also on the subject of aesthetics, neither Jolting Chain nor Synaptic Overload have any lightning particle effects shooting between the targets as it chains on Beta, though they do on Live. I hope that's just a bug. Even on live, Synaptic Overload has no lightning particles that go from the caster to the first target, it would be great to see that added.

But the patch notes also don't mention that enhancements increase the magnitude of the mez rather than the duration, so it all evens out, I guess...?

Creepers feels much better with the current patch, and the new resists on Spirit Tree let it soak alphas with aplomb (except against Lethal, but I understand that's a bug).

Is it a big hassle to change the color of their glowing hex armor per mob?

It actually won't do this any more; that's what the "real chain" in the patch notes refers to. In this video, you can see it continues to jump from target to target, even though it must have missed some of them, seeing as how they were +19 to me.

Tested these changes out on my Elec/Elec Scrapper; it’s a very nice improvement, overall. However, I feel like Power Surge still doesn’t do enough on Scrappers, Sentinels, and Stalkers; it’s very easy to cap your “big 3” resistances on this set, and the resist caps for those ATs are so low that enemies can still kill you pretty quickly, so all it can really offer you in many situations is the regen. Some debuff and movement resistance would be a good thing to add, in light of that.

The only female cop NPCs are just another model of generic civilian, there's none in the actual PPD faction that players can fight.

From my testing of Plant Control on beta: 1. Seeds of Confusion is still incredibly powerful. If it had launched with these numbers, I don't think the general opinion of the power would be much different than it is today. 2. The spawn rate and damage from Carrion Creepers feels too low. Rather than the flat 50% chance to spawn a vine, I think it should have diminishing odds per target; something like 100% chance to spawn a vine on the first target, 90% on the second, 75% on the third, and then 50% for any subsequent targets. I think the Creeper Vines ought to live longer, too; right now they die after 15s, bump that up to maybe 25s or 30s. The "CARRION CREEPERS" float text it puts up also seems to serve no purpose, not really sure why it's there. 3. Spirit Tree is useful now, but it's not really durable enough to soak an alpha. I would increase its resists to maybe 40%. 4. Spore Burst has been majorly upgraded thanks to Deep Sleep. No further notes here!

Yes, it works exactly as I described. Hitting even one target refreshes the duration of EVERY stack. Here's a recording of it (sped up 4x to save time): You can see how, starting from 0 stacks and using Devour Psyche off cooldown, no stacks expire and I'm eventually able to reach the maximum number of stacks by just repeatedly hitting one target.

As I understand it, the unique mechanics of this power make a cone desirable over a PBAoE. Since using this power resets the duration of ALL existing stacks, and since it has dynamic recharge, you basically want to hit as few targets as possible to keep the recharge low while refreshing the duration of the maxed stacks, and a cone is better for hitting fewer targets than a PBAoE.