Dev Discussion Allies: Updated Tooltips

Batman went from useless to broken and (more) pay to win in a single hotfix lol. I do hope every ally is useful and have asked for buffs on their base damage and what they do, but they shouldnt be a mandatory passive buff, Flashpoint Batman is stronger than a OP piece and everyone who pays irl money will be able to abuse it.

The idea behind allies should be occasion based buffs, so we can level different allies for different missions/loadouts, not a passive base stat buff that works in every scenario.

So you're reducing the effectiveness from the current efficacy on live back down to the "Heals less than Calculator's passive" range, AND you're keeping the 30 second cool down, on an Ally that takes 25 dollars to obtain, and 200 to max out.

That seems like kind of a middle finger to your customer base. I can understand not keeping the potential for a 99-120K Heal built into it, but this seems like overcorrecting by deliberately making it superfluous, AFTER A BUNCH OF PEOPLE SPENT MONEY ON IT.

It's no surprise. My expectations were set low from the beginning.
The other passive will likely get nerfed due to "imbalance" whining. After that happens, we should all say why does it cost so much to level a useless ally? If anything Flashpoint Batman should have its rarity demoted to Epic.

I'm not certain if this is the correct place for this, but the Professor Zoom ally sometimes just shows up, stands around, and does nothing, then runs away.

I mean... it checks with what he says on the bio screen, but for $5 I sort of expected... not that.

My question isn't about what Oracle-bot does. I can read the Tooltips, I know what it does.

My question is "why do we care about repairing gear during combat?"

Why would it matter to anyone? Nobody has ever had a problem dropping a repair-bot during combat. The number of times I've had gear completely broken, so it's down to 0 and non-functional, in ten years, has been maybe twice. And until gear gets to 0 (zero), why care?

So why on earth do I want something that helps repair during combat? It's a solution to a problem that doesn't seem to exist. My question is "what problem is this passive ameliorating/solving? Why should anyone want this passive?"

I'm not saying there aren't good reasons. I just have no idea what they might be. Maybe I'm missing something blindingly obvious.

On a completely digressive note, I've noted on several occasions in the past week that the Watchtower still, depending on time of day, sometimes has a much larger population than the Hall of Legends. Like, 500 people in phases at the WT while there are only around 200 in one or two phases at the HoL. Although at this very moment, it's around 220 people in the HoL to exactly 50 in the WT and exactly 50 in the Hall of Doom. (Weird exact balance.)

As I suggested might happen, inertia and habit are continuing to keep the WT/HoD -- at times more popular than the HoL despite dev intentions. OTOH, I don't see much reason to consider this a problem and the ratio will likely change over time. YMMV, of course.

Bug Reports
1. Flashpoint Batman's Suppressing Fire combat attack does double damage to bosses. The description for this combat ability needs to be updated to mention this.

2. For Sole Detective, my Defense stat remains at the 7.5% buff level after leaving a group. I've tried various things to get it to reset. Relogging or changing zones has been the only way to reliably correct it so far.

3. The "Blink to Target" logic may need some additional work for Flashpoint Batman. Batman's Boomer Bomb attack will reliably fall short of max-range targets:

Feedback
Not mentioned in the Test Server notes is that damage debuff for "Take That" was significantly reduced.

With Queen Diana at Level 10, I was seeing the following on Wrath Imps on September 18th:
Basic Ranged Attack: 33-35 per tick
Pulse Beam: 16-18 per tick

Following the latest hotfix, I'm seeing these numbers with the same testing character and setup:
Basic Ranged Attack: 40-42 per tick
Pulse Beam: 19-21 per tick

Maybe it is working as intended now?


Bug Report
Apparently it is possible to stack the debuff from Take That. I was able to cast my pulling power multiple times to further reduce Wrath Imp's attacks.

Currently on Live sometimes if an ally gets CCd after you summon them or not within line-of-sight they will not attack.

Bug Report
I noticed while testing Queen Diana's Command Presence that sometimes the NPCs that attack her don't receive any reflect damage. Here is an example:


Note the Psi-Ops Gunner at 16 seconds. He swings at Queen Diana, but takes no damage.

Another thing I've noticed is that it can sometimes be tricky to get Queen Diana to activate her ability. Here is an example:


You usually have to make sure that you are in combat with "everything." I had to attack one of the other NPCs that was attacking me to activate the ability. Also, watch the Bow Psi-Ops Defender at 28 seconds. That hit knocks him down, but does no reflect damage to him.

Here is an example where Doomsday just bounces off Queen Diana's Reflect Field and takes no damage:


One thing I dislike about Command Presence is that it sometimes takes the NPCs quite a while to be taunted by Queen Diana. So by the time they start attacking her, she only has a second or so of Reflect time left. You can see that in the previous video.

As far as I can tell, Queen Diana's Command Presence is useless in situations where the boss and NPCs are programmed to exclusively target the player.

Feedback
I'm not sure who Combat Suture is supposed to be aimed at now. The heal is smaller now and the cooldown is so long that you can't rely on it in an emergency. If I'm going to setup a Solo Survivalibility Build, I'd rather take Sole Detective over Combat Suture. For general group gameplay, a healer will be able to do a much better job of keeping you alive versus what Combat Suture would.

I am having a lot of trouble figuring out why I would want to pick this passive as a DPS versus almost anything else at the moment.

I'm not hating the repair passive on my alts. All 3 of them are really only ever going to get the cheapest choices so HoL bot/ oracke/ calc bot. They will each get a different combo but the passive from Oracle works well enough on toons that I never keep repair bots on. So I can horde them for my main. Even the roll to trigger wasn't terrible in my opinion, not great, but these passives shouldn't be crazy anyway. I remember a game having a roll to reload passive that everyone hated but me. Shotgun build and bam, greatest passive in the game for me. Point is, if no one wants it they don't have to use it but it works so it's fine.

I get all the posts about these passives and the devs are clearly adjusting. There are plenty of options and more will be added and imo, ones like Oracle's are what we should be wanting since they're a nice QoL upgrade vs a possible meta requirement.

And yes, I bought aquaman and spent a decent chunk of real money. Was a bday present to myself and I'm excited for him to go live with these changes. Wasn't cheap, but my choice and it isn't game breaking once it all works as intended. Will I buy another? Probably not any time soon but for a xmas present to myself, mayyyybe.

It did belatedly occur to me that the auto-repair passive will save a tiny amount of game cash, but it's a trivial amount for any experienced player. I can see that it might appeal to noobs fresh off the ship, but they're not going to be immediately buying Allies in most cases, either. Alts? Okay, I hadn't thought about that.

I certainly don't hate, or even dislike, this passive. I'm just somewhat puzzled by it.

Yeah, I hadn't even thought about fresh toons either haha. So that's not terrible for them. But yeah, it isn't something I'd be wanting on my main and it will probably be the 1st passive to get replaced if a new tier of cheapies comes out. But for such a low cost/ low effort, it's totally alt friendly. My 2 worst never repair anymore. I don't keep a ton of cash on them but that wasn't why I use her. Just so many instances where pug life has some wipes and I'm too lazy to fly back to the beginning of the map. Ok, Captain Derailment sliding on out of this thread to let the testers do their thangs

A small clarification on the Calculator passive skill, you do not need any rolls to activate this passive skill, it works automatically every 20 seconds (heals 5% of your health). And so it has been working for a month and a half (this change was on the test server before the release of the DLC on a live ...) ...

Have you fixed the tendency that stealth has to cause it?