Test Discussion Episode 34: Supercharges, Artifacts, and Balance Changes

Hello again! Thank you for all of the detailed feedback in the difficulty thread. We are moving the discussion to this new thread to talk about our goals for supercharges, artifacts, supercharge artifacts, and upcoming balance changes - in that order.

Let's talk goals for a second...

Goals for Supercharges

We want supercharges to be fun, impactful, impressive, and mostly tactical (i.e. they have a specific purpose and should be used at a specific time to maximize effectiveness). We also want them to have a backbone of standard rules that are strongly adhered to and carefully adjusted in order to spice things up. Currently, there are tons of Supercharges that do not meet these goals. The biggest problem is that they do not adhere to a strong, reliable rules backbone for them.

With that in mind, we have adjusted some of the existing ones towards the goal of having a more consistent ruleset. In the mid-term, we will be looking more at supercharges to help them towards these goals. I will keep in touch with you as these changes happen. After this adjustment, no more changes will be made to them for the release of EP 34 unless we find something truly game-breaking.

Goals for Artifacts

I am just going to reiterate a little bit of what has been said about artifacts in the past. These items are here to promote creating new playstyles, adjust current game rules, and give long-term goals. In serving that, we have goals for each artifact on top of these broad goals. We really like to use them to push people towards doing new things or to adjust existing mechanics is huge ways, to give you a reason to change what you do.

Given that part of the core mission of artifacts is to push the envelope, sometimes we will push too hard and have to pull back. We don't like nerfing things, so at release we aim to be conservative with the changes/power, but still exciting. This is not an easy line to walk because we want to push the game far enough to be exciting, but not so far that we break things.

We always take changing game balance seriously and never do it lightly. When we do have to make changes to artifacts or the mechanic they address, we do it with the game's best interests in mind. Our first goal is to make the game fun.

Goals for Supercharge Artifacts

Our goal currently for supercharge artifacts is to allow you to create builds that can utilize more supercharges, more frequently. The goal is not to allow you to tunnel on a single supercharge and use that as a singular crutch to succeed.


BALANCE CHANGES HERE

In an effort to make Justice League Dark content a little more challenging and tone down (but not remove) the supercharge shield meta, we made changes that will be hitting test today. One of the goals of Eye of Gemini and supercharges was to encourage coordination for a big payoff. We got the big payoff, but with minimal coordination that was ultimately too easy to achieve.

Increasing the healer supercharge shield cost (should have) made it more difficult to maintain maximum uptime. In reality, tanks or healers using these very fast supercharges allowed the group to easily and without much coordination regenerate enough supercharge to still maintain maximum uptime.

Therefore, we are making the following changes:

Vacuum Bubble

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 1 second)
• Increased damage

Devastating Flip

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 1 second)
• Increased damage

Dash Attack

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 1 second)
• Increased damage
• Increased shield value

Gale

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 1 second)
• Increased damage

Speed Drain

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 1 second)
• Increased damage

Pheromone Bloom

• Increased cooldown to 30 seconds (up from 12 seconds)
• Increased damage
• Increased HoT and Burst healing

With these changes, the supercharge shield meta is still possible but will require more coordination and will be more challenging to pull off - especially in elite content where everything rarely goes exactly as planned.

Needed changes. Thank you for addressing these.

Will these changes make it through to test during the current downtime for testing BSM's and damage? or will this be a later hotfix

It will be in the next Test update.

Seems fair
Could you also PLEASE look at Mental's Bastion Shield
Currently it has a 60 sec cooldown with a Supercharge of 5000

These changes really address the whole SC meta really well and I look forward to testing with it. You guys are really hitting it this dlc, much appreciated.

If our are going to be making such a large overhaul to sc timers than the rage timer needs to be increased to 30 seconds and neovenom needs to be reduced to 30 seconds.

In fact, should be all 30s or all 45s or all 60s and Bastion is the unique that has a 60s cooldown.

You introduce artifacts that allow us a % of power/ and or supercharge back once leveled, and the eye of gemini, that allows us to make builds with lesser hitting super charges faster, only to have their frequency dialed back by 30 times the existing amount?

Considering all the time, effort, and money putting into the artifacts to achieve this, these adjustments to cool downs dont sound fun at all. Not one bit.

I think some of the cool downs on the super charges were already pretty severe. If we have the SC built up, and the power to cast them, they should be available to us. Especially for the players that took the effort, time, and spent money to build their artifacts up to a level to achieve lesser hitting super charge builds.

That being said, this goes live, can we get refunds for all the supplies we purchased off the market place as paying customers to build these artifacts up in the first place to remain competetive?

They were not cheap. Seals of preservation, seals of completion, artifact xp tokens...are these things even being considered here?

This literally will break the Artifact system for me. I will have wasted a lot of time and money for nothing if these changes are implemented, and I bet you wont trick me to do it again.

Yep, as well as circuit Breaker which is also has 15 sec CD.

Sorry to clarify, does this mean you're going to look at all supercharges of all powers and set them at a comparable level of potential? Because the moment supercharges are obviously not balanced i.e. mentals aren't as good as rages? Is that the intent effectively a balance pass?

I don't want to make promises we cannot keep, but we would really like to make a balance pass on all supercharges in the game so that they are awesome and more interesting, and so that many more become viable - not just to EoG and Soul Cloak users.

This would require much more time and testing to take place. We just need to find the right time.

Well I think you can start adjusting the cooldowns for now and take it from there. Mental's cooldowns on all supercharges are 60 seconds, both damaging ones and the shielding one, Neo Venom Boost is 45 seconds, Circuit Breaker is 15s, Berserk is 15 seconds. Unless Im overlooking some supercharges, I believe all other supercharges are 30 seconds, so I think that the one I mentioned should be 30 seconds as well.

Neo Venom Boost also lacks a white head mod for 5% SC back.

One of Nature's healing supercharges should have a shield component to it like all the other healer powersets. We seldom see Nature healers anymore because they lack a group shield.

I think that should round up the supercharges and their cool downs. As for a balance pass damage wise, I assume you're going to ask for that in a separate thread.

We spent time, and money to build these artifacts up so the options were available to us to use faster super charge builds once we leveled these artifacts.

We literally wasted time and money to do so, is pretty much what your saying, if you make these horrible changes. Im serious Avair, people spent a lot of money on these artifacts with exp tokens off the market place, seals of completion and on seals of preservation just to open the abilities up that you are now trying to take away with cool downs that are 30 times the existing amount.

Leave the cool downs alone, and never let this see live. I will not spend another dime on the marketplace to build up another artifact again, if you subject me to this kind of financial loss and waste of my effort in game and with my money. This is not right at all.

Interesting overview!

In my opinion, the real problem has been people exploiting the under 30 sec mega-short cooldown SCs (ie Pheremone Bloom, Dash Attack, etc). But now the issue that the problem has been overcorrected with this set of changes.

It would be better to implement the proposed changes to Dash Attack, et al but leave the healer shield SCs alone or at the very most, increase them to 75%ers rather than 100%ers. 100% SC for heal supers is simply too high.

I'm going to co-sign this.

One way to deal with this is by offering one-off Artifact exchange system that retains all xp and levels of an artifact in favor of a new one. Leave out the JLD artifacts so no one exploits it. Otherwise, it's going to feel comfortable spending any time or money artifacts ever again.

I think you do not understand correctly: for example, if you have SoC 160 you will still get an advantage in comparison for whom do not have this artifact.

This is just a straight trashy move. Some people probably complained that didnt like to see people with LEVELED artifacts that THEY PAID FOR in game on the market place, so now we have to take a financial loss like this and expect to be okay with it?

We paid to level these artifacts to use faster, lower end super charges faster! I literally bought artifact xp packs, seals of completion, and seals of preservation to level my artifacts in support of the game, and to get these abilities for my character. Not to just lose money because some people are complaining to a dev, that probably didnt level their own artifacts or spend money in game to work the artifacts themselves. This will literally make many of us, never trust this system again.

All of these changes are unnecessary, simply had to increase the CD for the EoG affect. With these changes natures healers will still go in and out of bug form still building supercharges.

I understand it just fine. Many of us paid for and leveled these artifacts for faster, lower damaging super charge builds, only nbow to see the super charges have their cool downs increased by as much as 30%. This isnt anything but wasting a lot of people's time and MONEY by doing this.

Nope.