Test Discussion Episode 42: Ally - Batman Who Laughs

Bug Report
To add on to what others have reported, the following will trigger a card change:
1. Exiting Stealth or Invisibility
2. Switching Armories
3. Removing and re-equpping a weapon. Here is a demonstration:


EDIT:
Weird stuff can happen too if you remove and re-equip a trinket several times. Watch what happens at 38 seconds:

Hopefully Luck of the Draw indicates what random buff is activated.

Howdy Everyone, some planed changes coming to PC test soon, please let me know your thoughts

Luck of the Draw
[Passive Ability]
While in combat, receive a random buff card from The Batman Who Laughs Deck. The effects are as follows:

• Gaea Card: HP Heal
• Enigma Card: Power Heal
• Frigor Card: Increased crit chance duration 10s
• Batman Card: Increased might duration 10s

Changed to


Luck of the Draw
[Passive Ability]
While in combat, receive a random buff card from The Batman Who Laughs Deck. The effects are as follows:

• Gaea Card: Increased Max HP duration 20s
• Enigma Card: In-combat power regen increase duration 20s
• Frigor Card: Increased crit chance (for all crit types) duration 20s
• Batman Card: Increased might,prec,resto,dom,vit duration 20s

Changes

1. Starting Duration Scaled back from from 10s to 5s and will now scale up to 20s at max rank
   1. This increases uptime while giving more value to ranking up the ally
2. Gaea changed from Heal to max HP increase
   1. A random heal isn't super valuable, this way players can really get value out of Gaea
3. Enigma changed from Power Heal to Power Regen
   1. Increasing max power doesn't have the same value as Max HP, so we went with Power regen which is something that players can really notice
4. Frigor rebalanced to grab all crit types
   1. Orignally he was just hitting prec & might crit but now he is expanded to hit heal & Pow heal crit as well
5. Batman Expanded to grab all relevant stats
   1. We had planned to make it also refine based on role but we don't see a huge negative for giving resto and dominance to DPS players

Toxic Encore
[Passive Ability]
When using a finisher on an enemy below 25% health, prepare a bomb that will activate on the next finisher. The activated bomb will release a field of defense-reducing toxin for 10s.

Changed to
Toxic Encore
[Passive Ability]
When using a finisher on an enemy below 45% health, prepare a bomb that will activate on the next finisher. The activated bomb will release a field of defense-reducing toxin for 10s.
Changes

1. Starting Percentage to activate Toxic Encore will remain at the original value of 25% but as you rank up the ally it will max out at 45%
   1. Both Players and I found it clunky and difficult to activate TE at such a low HP threshold so to compensate we are making the ability scale up as you rank your BWL ally to add extra value to leveling.

As always Thanks for the feedback.
-Ranmaru

That sounds really good.

Will there be an animiation shown for Toxic encore?

These changes will make the Ally a viable choice now but I suspect you'll want to reduce the stat buff potency on Luck of the Draw by around the same factor that the duration is extended. Similarly, it would probably be best to cut the crit buff in half in addition to such an adjustment, as 12% is pretty extreme. That will keep it more balanced with comparable options now that the QoL/functionality is looking to be in a competitive place.

These sound more promising.

I still am not excited about the random buffs, but these are more appetizing than previous iteration.

I had a chance to test out the finisher one, Toxic Encore. This is actually a really good one and the increase in the threshold makes it better.

Also, how come you still don't show up in the Dev Tracker? Did you do something to Mepps?

Hi,

I think the graphical effect of this ally is MUCH TOO LARGE.



I had that popping up while walking around in the house of legends. This is very distracting and "hides" too much screen space under it, especially in a dense fight.

The size of the card should approximately be that of the blue part of the arm shown in the picture maximally - a third of the current size - or IMHO even better, not appear overhead, but besides the status graphic with with health and power bar.

Thanks for your consideration.
AP

Your opinion is noted but we're past client lock. This is how it will launch. If we get enough feedback to warrant a change, we'll do so for the next client update which will be in place for Anniversary Event.

While I personally agree that the card is to large, you gotta remember that there are others who actually want to see which card they get as well. They can’t please everyone with something like this

The character on the screenshot is "normal" size. Imagine how this would look like on a character with "small" body size.

The FX use socket scale so they should scale to the body type. If they don't then that's something we would address - in a client update.

Bug Report
I'm seeing several bugs on Luck of the Draw at the moment. Here is a demonstration video:


1. It is proccing even when out of combat. It begins the moment you equip it.
2. Luck of the Draw can stack with itself while using stealth, armories, or performing inventory functions. I've seen my crit rate go from 45% up to 60% and sometimes even 67% because of multiple Frigor Card procs.
3. Only the Frigor Card is proccing.

Looks a bit large to me, I know you've locked this in for now but if I may make a suggestion, why not a color coded fire animation surrounding a much smaller card above the player to provide two ways to indicate which one it is.

• Gaea Card: Increased Max HP duration 20s - green fire surrounds the card
• Enigma Card: In-combat power regen increase duration 20s - blue fire surrounds the card
• Frigor Card: Increased crit chance (for all crit types) duration 20s - red fire surrounds the card
• Batman Card: Increased might,prec,resto,dom,vit duration 20s - purple fire surrounds the card

Those colors also loosely represent by color what the card is also going to be, based on premise

This would allow you to make the cards much smaller and less intrusive

Something like that very well could happen. Thanks for the suggestion.

Bug Report
Toxic Encore also has some bugs:


I use Fear Gas as a benchmark in this video since it has no damage variance. I've removed any artifacts or mods that would give me a per-cast Might boost. My standard damage tick at the start of the video is 1337 per non-crit tick.

Toxic Encore Stacking
As you can see at 17 to 19 seconds, I was able to get a 2x and 3x stack of Toxic Encore.

Toxic Encore Time Extension
With careful timing of the use of Photon Blast, I've been able to get the Toxic Encore buff to last up to 15 seconds.

Toxic Encore Working Above 45% Health
Sometime Toxic Encore works on a nearly full-health boss:

Bug Report
With some quick item swapping, you can do some insane Crit Stat Buffing:


I got my crit chance percentages up to 240%.

Cool you're welcome

And this wasn't able to be done before this patch, correct? Making sure we know where to start looking.

Prior to the hotfix, I was able to trigger multiple procs using stealth, exiting stealth, switching armories, using trinkets, swapping items, and performing other basic inventory actions. I never tried it to this degree though.

It looks like all of those are still triggering the Frigor proc.

Here's my quick experience with the artifact. Video was made about 20 minutes ago and 2 seconds after logging on. NOT in combat Showed initial crit stats, soon as I left the stat UI, card triggers to Frigor, I show the buffed crits, goes away around 20 seconds and triggers again after 10 seconds. All this just from checking the stats.