Test Discussion Episode 34: Grimorium Verum - Artifact

tested this at 120. I was fire and used the standard heat vision and absorb heat dps loadout. it seemed to work well with channeling powers and I imagine DOTS as it came out on the 2nd tick of heat vision. or if I started with absorb heat, the 2nd tick on that also. that way you can get the pet going on the first power you use if you do a dot or channel power first. damage seemed to be about the same as robot sidekick. the question I have is will it affect your crits negatively like robot sidekick does? it seems like this would go well with a precision dps as it will boost whatever power they clip their weapon buff with from the pi that the pet applies

That's only visual. So say my powerset does 50 ticks in 10s. Normally, it would crit 13-14 of those ticks. That would create 26-28% crit chance on the combat log. But if I have a robot sidekick that does 20 ticks in that time period as well, that's 70 ticks with 13-14 crits, which is 18.57-20% crit chance instead. It doesn't actually hurt you, it just appears that way because it counts every source of damage including passive extra damage on demon fang for example.

Bug Report
The Eye of Gemini has some odd interactions with the Grimorium Verum:


The Grimorium Verum generated two Eye of Gemini damage procs. 168 damage at 11 seconds and 500 damage at 14 seconds. What caused that to happen? It should just be one damage proc. I didn't move outside the circle.

Also, the Eye of Gemini caused the Grimorium Verum to switch targets. You don't see it very well at the end of the first video, but you can see the after effects here:


That shouldn't happen. I want the pet to keep applying power interactions and damage to the enemy I'm targeting.

If you could change the electric PI applied to polarized, that would be a tremendous improvement.

No electric DPS I know uses polarized because the electrified pi appliers are so good you pretty much have to run with them. If this artifact applied polarized, you'd see more Electric able to use E-Bomb and spark barrage.

During the revamp it seemed that all the Destabilized Quantum abilites had lower base damage, likely because the SC generator works with that PI which is the same for Polarized Electricity. If you don't want to use the SC generator because frankly, with maxed out Soul Cloak and Eye of Gemini, you don't need to, then this helps even out some of the imbalance.

Bug Report

This is just a visual confirmation of what previous feedback with the Pet getting stuck on sparring targets. I started on the 3 ran to the 8 in combat the Pet didn't follow and stayed at the 3 targets and when I went back it was just hovering. Then when I attempted to summon it on the 8 target it was unsuccessful and despite going in and out of combat and taking off the artitact and reequipped it I was forced to relog my game to correct the issue.

Feedback
I spent a couple of hours last night doing parser testing for Gadgets Play from the Tray builds utilizing the Grimorium Verum. Nothing I've tested so far seems to benefit from using the Grimorium Verum. You get a slight bump from the pet doing single-target damage, but it isn't much. I suppose the main issue is that "Electrify" doesn't give you many new loadout options on Gadgets side. Sticky Bomb, Paralyzing Dart, and EMP all make use of any PI that a Gadgets player can setup. Almost anything else you're going to slot will inflict a power interaction that will setup the three previously mentioned powers. At best, the pet will give you boosted PI damage on your 4th power in a 4 power rotation.

It would be more interesting if the Gadgets pet inflicted Dazed. Gadgets has several Dazed PI applicators, but none of them are great. Stasis Field generates annoying encasements and has a long cooldown. If the pet inflicted Dazed, it would make it easier to use Vortex Cannon in a build.

Updated original post with upcoming changes to this artifact.

This happens because of the way abilities that hit in AoE work. AoE starts dmg on primary target and spreads outwards, thus technically making the last target you hit the outer most target (even though it looks instant across all NPCs), pet always focuses on last target hit by player.

Auto-scrolling item descriptions? No, thank you.

We had auto-scrolling item descriptions before. It was back then a bad idea and it is now.

The auto-scrolling maybe is good for 10-20% percent of the reading cases. For the rest of the time it is just annoying. It is especially hard if you want to read/look-up something in the lower part since it scrolls back to the beginning immediately when it reaches the end leaving the reader no rest to find what he/she is looking for.

This is an absolute no-go zone. It is not a comfort, it's an absolute pain in the rear.

Please leave the reading choices to the readers and let us do the scrolling with mouse or controller if necessary. Thank you.

Regards,
AP

I was in the JL Dark open world and saw numerous problems.

One time the pet showed up. Did some damage, had some fun. It vanished after combat, but still appeared under my name as though it was still there. If I re-entered combat, the name stayed but the pet didn't reappear. After a while the name went away, and when I entered combat again neither the pet nor the pet's name appeared anywhere.

This happened with newest update after the changes? What powerset are you running?

Yes, and atomic.

I tried it again in a league hall as electric, and it worked as expected on sparring targets.

Feedback
In regards to the Dazed power interaction change for Gadgets, it had a few effects:

• It is now much easier to run Vortex Cannon in a melee loadout. The only issue is that parser testing is showing Vortex Cannon to be a net loss compared to what you could be using in its slot. So it is great for people that want to use Vortex Cannon.
• It helps out with Taser Pull. The most reliable way to setup Dazed for Taser Pull was to use Stasis Field or use a mid-range clip with Stealth. You can now sit back a bit farther depending on the situation and have Dazed reliably inflicted.
• The change didn't have much of an effect on Ranged AoE loadouts. Instead of setting up Fear Gas and Cryo-Foam via Electrified, Dazed now sets up Gauss Grenade. So for a Play from the Tray loadout, you're looking at using Gauss Grenade, Paralyzing Dart, Sticky Bomb, and Downdraft.

In reality, the Grimorium Verum is a very modest Damage boost in ideal situations. I found that it wouldn't apply a power interaction until usually my 5th or 6th cast. When doing parser testing at CR 260, it was about an extra 1k dps for Gadgets PftT.

I'm glad you mentioned it and reminded me. Good lord that auto-scrolling sucks.

Please remove the auto scrolling. It's an extreme pain in the ssa.

Other than that^^^^^
This is a really neat little pet artifact. I love it and I think a lot of players will use this.
Whether it's supper helpful or not players will use it because it's a pet and it pops out when you attack something. There will be floating eyeballs everywhere.

I think that you could make a number a visual variations of the artifact. You could even go s far as making ones and ones that matched each power. I think the player base would be very receptive and buy them up just because.

This has been happening since day one, at least since as Atomic and Rage powerset.

Hey all, lets keep this on topic and not about the scrolling text. We know the feedback on scrolling text from both our players and developers within the studio, however that isn't anything that will be discussed or resolved here.

Thanks!

I am unable to replicate this bug with the fixed I put in while playing Atomic. Were you fighting a particular event in open world or just running around fighting local base pop?

For me, this bug manifested in open world(as Atomic and Rage), and never on sparring target (leagu)...