Does anyone remember the % cost of a combo? I might be misremembering, but I believe a combo is 50% of the tray power's cost. Hand Clap is 300 base from the tray, so the combo version should be 150 base. If that's the case, I don't understand why combo powers do not count toward the ability counter. I get that some combo powers are 100 or 150 base costs, so their combo is less than a power from the tray. Chill shows a typical HL rotation in his video above. If you aren't a fan of heat vision, you could also be doing something like (> = combo'd, / = from the tray) HC>HC>HC/GH>GH/HC>HC>HC/GH The bold green are the tray abilities That whole sequence costs 1700 power 300>150>150/200>100/300>150>150/200 Even if I picked all 300 cost powers in a non-combo powerset, I'd only use 1200 (300 cost * 4 moves) before Oracle would give power back I love that repairing is no longer going to be a hurdle for folks trying out harder content, I think that's a fabulous change. This is definitely not an ally that going to get slotted in ever again for me, though. I think it'd be better if it did it every 4 abilities, combo or tray. If the concern is then it'd give too much back for lower power cost combos, have it return a % of what was used instead of a % of base power.
I think it's coded by utilizing actual ability activation from the loadout. If it would use power procs as Ebon does, it would mean heat vision counts as 3 abilities. This is mainly an issue with Light in particular since there is no other combo power that's so intense on power cost. If we look at the overall state Light has been in for ages, it could simply use the "Nature treatment" as well, which could possibly address these issues and the issues the powerset has with putting out acceptable damage.
New Oracle passive feedback I'm torn between accessibility and balance. First of all, Powers. I will mainly refer to Gadgets and Mental in this comparison because I don't see any other power in this game that's able to struggle with power in content when a troll is in the group. Accessibility: It's great in that regard as it provides much more freedom for instances that don't usually have a troll in their meta setup. Solo, Duo, Alert. This applies to all powers and roles. Mental and Gadgets specifically have very extreme power issues when not at optimal stats and gear/artifacts/allies, so this is also great in that regard. Balance: This is sort of problematic. First of all, I have a Gadget and Mental Character at endgame level on the live server, so I'm technically biased to make this ally as beneficial as possible to my advantage. However, there are ways to play these powers without struggling with power at all and still be able to outperform most other if not all powersets. What my testing concludes is, that both Gadgets and Mental would be able to utilize Ebon without the need to cancel the stacks with a finisher and also without the need of swapping out the artifact. Specifically with gadgets, my current go-to loadout doesn't use Heatvision. I replaced my finisher with it so that my stacks wouldn't get canceled and the overall damage increased by ~10%. Knowing the community, it won't end there. Because the finisher is faster and does more damage than heat vision, it will still be used and ebon will be swapped out before each use. (Testing these powersets with a massive Ping is also not very precise, so if this hits live, I will redo this to see if the difference is really that great). All of this leads to an even greater imbalance when it comes to powersets that can drain their power bar with the use of multiple abilities. All of this aside, we have other roles that could greatly benefit from this, such as Might-based battle tanks and healers overall who don't want to rely on Purple Healing Ray. Might-based Battle trolls are certainly not unhappy either. Summary: This is a great change but maybe a bit too beneficial to the already top-tier powersets when it comes to Dps. The broad advantages across the board are so great, however, that I wouldn't want this to get changed - at least not drastically.
I am not against doing away with repairing gear but, i want to know what i will be receiving in compensation for the 200+ repair bots that i currently have? I got 95% 0f them from buying booster bundles over the years and use them for group missions all the time. I would love to get something like 10 source marks per repair bot or something like that. Thank you
Passive is equal to all players and like always...we´ll adjust, we´ll always find ways. In my view ,for controller powers it will be more benefitial and I see as a good thing, we don't see many mental ,HL ,atomic dps players anymore. And on powers that don´t use that much on rotation we can always use 2 buff stats allies, like zatanna and batman who laughs. In my view this is just another viable and cheap material-wise option. Edit: i didn´t test myself, i only watched obsidian's testing.
I agree, but based on my testing the extra power granted by Oracle (paired with Ebon at least), leads to a much greater benefit than a buff ally on another powerset would. Mental isn't even remotely bad, but people usually take the very similar but simply better powerset gadgets which will also get a boost from this ally. That's all I wanted to point out. I sincerely hope that HL and Atomic will benefit from it, but it can't be greater than what gadgets/mental get out of it unless you do the sweaty swap with Ebon before each finisher already anyway. Then it barely matters.
I like the change, but as others have mentioned, I'd also like to know what will be done about repair bots? I have probably like 200 or something from buying some, booster bundles, etc. I remember with Vault Tickets it just gave you random vault items, a mark and piece of gear when you used one, perhaps something like that could happen, pop a repair bot and you get a random chance for ally favor, or artifact xp, or source marks, etc.
Since the repair tab is being removed, can it be replaced with a mainframe/tac mod tab? It will be more streamlined for players to add the new mods in after getting new gear in instance.
Tbh, this ally only seems to favor non-combo powers. I hope they change it to count combos as another ability just as amulet and ebon counts combos as another stack.
This ally doesn’t need to be tuned down or nerfed. The reasoning is simple: they will nerf it just to release a LEGENDARY ally that does the same thing but costs 10x more and they will not nerf or tune down that one. This ally is literally the holy grail for all powers that struggle with power costs and regen and it will also help might get on par with precision which I personally think is great. So please devs, leave this as is since it’s a great change for both end game tryhard 1% players and casuals/starters/f2p.
It already got tuned down a bit. The main problem is that this ally would pretty much replace the Troll role in terms of powering the group and because many don't see the great advantages of debuffs, it could lead to some questionable group setups.
The reason it got tuned downwards was because of its high performance due to a miscalculation on my end, It should be decently usable still by most powersets who are struggling with upkeep early game without a troll, but as I view it in a raid or alert with a good troll and properly leveled augs and base mainframe you shouldn't struggle with power upkeep as much.
New Oracle passive feedback after 1st hotfix I ran my tests again with the same setups and it seems to be impossible to not cancel Ebon and play with gadgets, unless you use Oracle+Power efficiency+Good Troll. It should have no impact on any other powerset and is still very potent. This will still keep the Troll on peoples radar when going into group content, which is nice.
My feedback is mainly aiming to retain at least some sort of balance when not factoring in artifact swapping. You know... the way the system was inititially designed for. If we would get a message one day, where Artifact swapping will no longer be supported, Gadgets would already outperform any other powerset by a lot. With Oracle not getting slightly adjusted, this would've only increased further.
Given that we only have two support ally slots and there are several really good allies for damage role, Oracle Bot will only be used by players with specific powersets and loadouts that struggle with power. These power-hungry powersets are that way because of their nature and the way they do damage. It's not necessarily the case that more power = more damage across the board. In fact, most powersets would struggle to do top damage and be power hungry at the same time even if they tried, because of channels and cast times. The power-hungry powersets activate abilities at a faster rate than most. The goal of this ally should be to allow these players to perform their rotations without running out of power, provided they have a troll and are superpowered spec'd (if they're might-based). My point is that the users of certain powersets shouldn't be punished because of the way those powersets were designed. Hard Light uses a lot of power with its best single target rotation, yet even if it had no trouble maintaining that rotation, it does not overperform at all. Instead, what we see at the highest level is that these powers which are power-hungry because they lack channels and cast times are neglected. To this end, I urge you to revert the ability requirement to 4, or at least bring it down to 5. I don't mind the reduction of the % power return if the ability requirement remains reasonably low.
I would rather address the affected powerset directly because of reasons stated here before. If HL still wouldn't outperform most other powers with it's best - then - possible rotation, why would you want other specific powers to have an even greater advantage? A damage adjustment on Hard lights abilities would seem more reasonable to me in that regard. Possibly a revisit to that powers powercost of abilities too.
For the 6 casts, does it have a timer? Like, the group killing adds, add die faster, and player only casted 4 times, then like 20-30 sec later it retstart casting. Does it have a timer reset between casts or it stays on while logged in?
Would it be possible to adjust % of power back to shorter number of power casts, to make it small power backs instead of a bigger and longer one? So it´d be more regular.
I agree that if you're running content with a controller, there should be no need for this. I was viewing this as a good thing to throw on during open-world bounties or a solo/duo where the pressure isn't quite as high to use a passive buff ally but this could help me not be as reliant on colas/supplies. I'm Hard Light, though, so that's not gonna happen.
Hotfix nerfed the ally too much. Can we revert to original or at least tone down ability requirement to 4 please? Can't maintain electric AoE rotation at all anymore. There is no sense in giving ally some ability if it barely helps majority audience. Just because some end game players may find a way to use it beyond its intended effect, shouldn't be a cause to punish rest of the player base, The faction of players who would appreciate/need this ally is low level, low sp, newcomers and mid level players. With current hotfix there is little to no reason for those players to use this ally at all.
