Dev Discussion Episode 43: Artifact - M.E.R.C.Y Amazotron Matrix

New Artifact

M.E.R.C.Y. Amazotron Matrix - Pet DPS Artifact

M.E.R.C.Y. Restorative Module

• When you are healed your pets will be healed for (25/25/33/50)% of the heal amount.

M.E.R.C.Y. Reactive Field

• Summoning a Trinket Pet damages all nearby enemies. M.E.R.C.Y. Reactive Field damage increased by (0/25/50/100)%.

M.E.R.C.Y. Attack Protocol

• Cooldown: 6s
• Power Cost: 200
• Command Crystal, Fury, or Robot Sidekick to scan for nearby targets before releasing a devastating attack.
• Activating M.E.R.C.Y Attack Protocol reduces the cooldown of your Trinket Pet by (0/4/5/6) seconds.
• This ability either replaces the Fortify Golem or Offering power, or grants a new power.

M.E.R.C.Y. Defensive Module

• Summoning an Accomplice, Henchmen, Sidekick, or Trinket Pet applies a shield to your Pets, with a 60 second cooldown.
• Receiving healing while above 95% Health sends applies a weak shield to your Pets, with a 10 second cooldown.
• M.E.R.C.Y. Defensive Module shield strength increased by (0/0/0%/50%).

Developer notes
Howdy Everyone, Ranmaru here again with a new artifact. The M.E.R.C.Y. Amazotron Matrix helps expand the pet playstyle to all powersets, so here are my general thoughts on the artifact.

Artifact Design
As someone who plays pet builds often on live I really wanted to be able to experience this playstyle, but not have to be Earth or Sorc to truly get the full value out of my load out. So we went ahead and designed an artifact about opening up the pet potential for other powers

High-level goals

• Make Robot sidekick a reasonable contender versus Fury & Crystal
• Keep Crystal and Fury Relevant
• Add even more value to pet load out setups
• Bring the 'pet' playstyle to have more active pets

Going in with those high level goals, I feel like we have met those. But please let me know if you disagree!

Recommended Loadout
Artifact Suggestions

1. MAM (Obviously)
2. Godwave - No way you'll run a pet build without this. I would consider this almost an auto include.
3. FLEX SPOT - My personal recommendation would be to run Quizlet since his overall dps is quite good, but you will have to run a SC, RSK & MAP, so you're pretty low on load out spots. It may be quite challenging to get a full rotation around missing these abilities.

The other option is the Grim. This will allow you to have a more greedy load out for your power consumption, but grim is a bit weaker of a DPS pet vs. quiz. But, you can free up a load out spot to not need a SC.

Visit Constantine to pick up this latest artifact!

When testing this artifact with the Gadget's RSK, I've noticed that it's making it apply the electrified PI. This choice is kinda weird because that is the least useful PI for a build that has both MERCY and Source Shard. The daze PI would have been the most useful, but if intending to not overlap with Grim already giving daze, frostbite would have been a better option than electrify.

I didn't get a chance to test much, was trying to get my run in. On test, it was Frostbite, so it's back to Electrified? And I don't mind, since most of Gadgets' attacks benefit from all 4 PIs.

I just think it's the worst PI they could have chosen, Gauss Grenade and Taser Pull are the most used powers and they already apply electrify.

my feedback is that, i want to use this, im just not willing to give up a slot on my power bar for activate M.E.R.C.Y Attack Protocol. so for that reason i wont be using it

maybe if i someday go for a full pet build on a character instead of just a character with a lot of pets like i have now, i might have to revisit this

Initial testing I did when it was Electrified, I found using Napalm Grenade a good AOE spam power. Base burst damage is lower, but the DoTs it produced resulted in higher net damage. I'll have to do more testing. I'll agree, maybe Frostbite would be better, but I'm flexible either way.

Hello Ranmaru,

So far I'm really enjoying this artifact. It's fantastic and really shines at rank 200. I paired it with the Clarion and Trans/Quiz on some of my builds. I like trying a mix/well round build usually and this one is pretty interesting for me. I have a couple of builds I may work on in the future but this one was a bit more appealing to me. Thank you for creating these unique artifacts to choose from as it gives players different options and play styles to explore.

I just want to show my appreciation and gratitude toward your and the rest of the teams collaboration and work done on the games recent changes and additions. Thank you all.

Sincerely: Brav

I’m a sorc main and I run pet built. I’m on live server on Xbox. I got MERCY Amazotron Matrix to 200 and I quickly started using it in an alert and I noticed that fury is extremely laggy and not moving much as I’m popping ‘ M.E.R.C.Y. Attack Protocol’. The artifact states that it ‘overtasks’ fury, crystal, and RSK to move faster and hit harder. I expected to see fury moving faster than usual but instead he stays in place, in attacks from there and as we move away from the area, fury doesn’t move with us. All this is while I’m in combat and popping ‘ M.E.R.C.Y. Attack Protocol’ power. I tried it out with RSK and exobyte RSK. Same thing. When I stop using MERCY artifact fury’s behavior goes back to normal. Tbh I’m a little disappointed. I spent all this money on a faulty art

Overtasks doesn't mean it will be more active, it just means it gives it more power to deal damage. I think it's flavor text than anything. What MAM does when you MAP is gives Fury and Crystal the same attacks as Robot Sidekick. It will do a scan, which checks to see if the target is single or multiple. If single target, it will do a beam and if multiple, a detonation.

Ok thanks for that explanation. But that still doesn’t explain fury’s strange behavior. My pets, RSK, and fury included always follow bosses. At some point while battling last boss in the new alert, fury was hanging by the entrance while we were to further right. He did not follow me nor the bosses. Before equipping MAM fury did not have this behavior. Fury was always on boss/adds or following me.

It's because it has a new attack and it's similar behavior to RSK. So most likely it's the new attacks that had it change, since it scans now. But really, didn't change much in damage wise, but keep track of the behavior. If it's not attacking at all, then there is a problem with it's AI. I did a lot of dummy testing and it was limited on real combat testing, but the ones that I did do, I didn't notice it not attacking.

After some testing, yes, I think Frostbite would be a better choice here.

Did you try de-spawning Fury and then bringing it back? I've seen Fury get stuck and not do combat on my Sorcery prior to the new artifact, and that has fixed it for me. It's a rare bug, but I believe it has existed for a while now.

Can you please put mercy attack protocol to 80 and not 120, the artifact is useless a 80, is take to many Nth to put to 120 to unlock the main reason why we use the artifact. The 25% healing at 80 is useless, why need that when you just have to recast the robosidekick, the RSK already do a shield all the time so not really need a healing incoming, dont understand why you put the offensive protocol to 120, no sense for me, you want to put pet build diversity but Mercy already take a slot in skill bar so , skill bar slot + need to be 120 to use = too a big handicap for to be used for an artifact !!!!

Yes I did. I had never seen fury act like that. I even tried out with RSK and I noticed RSK having the same behavior. I’m using the art and still keeping an eye. The reaction time for fury is so slow that sometimes godwave strength effect is gone by the time he does an attack. I’ve also tried hitting MAP first then pop Godwave Strength so fury has some time, but he still takes a long time to attack. And I know this comes from him scanning the area but damn it’s just too long. Fury’s reaction time along with RSK are a little delayed.

In all of my testing, map worked better without source imo. It does react slowly so it was a lot better to not give up 3 slots for MAP/Godwave/rsk and run map/quislet/ and pick up the extra slot and use either grim (the double pi effect is useless but whatever) or any other of the meta choices. I just could not get the source timing right often enough to justify running source. I’d think I’d get it better eventually but I’m already a pet power class

I have been hesitating a like a second or two before popping godwave when I use MAP. But I feel like I shouldn’t have to do that. I hope that’s something that can be fixed. Not sure if you noticed RSK behavior a bit laggy? i noticed it with fury and RSK

Yeah, with the old style pet build for sorcery you would hit godwave then offering. With mercy, you hit map then wait 2 or 3secs then hit gw. Which is why I liked it more without, felt way smoother. Just feed every 6secs and put it into a normal rotation. If it takes fury or rsk 5secs to attack after, whatever. There’s no real way to get rsk/ the new attack to happen any faster. I get that everyone wants to pair it with source but I think they’re missing out on the other possible combos that can work well with it while retaining a normal might rotation. Source builds are best described as clunky. You get used to it and I’m assuming mercy and source will get that same groove once people are used to it but I couldn’t really find that groove. Without source, I found a lot of decent loadouts for almost every powerset.

I have some footage here where you can see fury’s strange behavior. Behavior I had never experienced before with fury. As I’m running away going to other adds Fury is seen floating not knowing what to do. All while I’m still using Godwave and MAP. Here’s the proof. At 30 seconds Fury completely stops dpsing and just floats there. At 43 seconds he starts responding.

I have some more over here with RSK. RSK has the green shield so you can see RSK in the back. All while I’m popping godwave and MAP. I think it’s glitched. I’ve been experiencing this a lot with fury and RSK. Laggy and delays. I thought this would enhance offering. But if anything it’s weakened fury.